


Evergreen

by WENN9366



Category: Hazzard - Fandom, The Dukes of Hazzard (TV), The Dukes of Hazzard - Fandom
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Timelines, Amnesia, Angst, Car Accident, Crime, Did I Mention There Was Angst?, Drama, F/M, Hazzard, Journey of a Lifetime, Lake Superior is a Killing Machine, Minor Character Death, More angst, Murder Mystery, Northwoods, Post-Canon, Tragedy, lots of snow, probably lots of angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 48,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25203898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WENN9366/pseuds/WENN9366
Summary: Some things are temporary - some things endure forever. When an accident changes Daisy's life forever, the quest to rediscover an lost friend leads her on the journey of a lifetime and the race to solve a string of murders before the unthinkable happens.This story begins in 1987, which is 2 years after Season 7 of the series ends (and long before the 1st Reunion movie...just pretend that never happens.





	1. Once Upon a Time...

**Author's Note:**

> (Please note: Poetry listed as "by the author" are my own copyrighted works. Enjoy!)
> 
> "I met a thief along the road,  
> his face he did not show.  
> He stole a priceless gift from me,  
> but what, I do not know."  
> -the author

**_October 1987_ **

Beneath a sky of deep and azure blue, the autumn winds swept down over northern Georgia from the Appalachian foothills. They shook the leaves of the oaks and ash, which had just begun their metamorphosis from green to brown, stopping momentarily at brighter shades in between.

The weekend of October 23rd brought a wealth of visitors to the town of Hazzard by way of the annual Hazzard County Fair. Families from neighboring counties too small to host a fair of their own bustled into their vans and station wagons and parked in cornfields, eager to spend their money and eat fried foods.

Daisy surveyed the crowd milling about about the square as she pulled Dixie over to the curb.

"Uncle Jesse, are you sure you don't want me to stay with you?" she asked. "I'm just going to Capital City for some groceries, and I can put that off until the boys get here."

"No baby," he said, patting her shoulder. "You go on. I'll be just fine here by myself." He picked up the heavy stock pot from where it rested on the floor between his feet, and an aroma of spice and gamey meat came with it. "I'm gonna take this chili to the judging tent, and then head over to the craft barn. I've been mighty excited to see what the kids from the orphanage have come up with this year."

"Oh, me too, Uncle Jesse! It was so nice of Doc Appelby to buy all those art supplies for them." Those kids had a way of worming themselves into Daisy's heart; after all, she and the boys might have ended up there if Uncle Jesse hadn't taken them in. "Alright then, if you're sure you'll be okay."

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he assured her. "You go on. You ain't been over to Capital City since last Christmas, and they've put a fresh coat of paint on the main street buildings. Looks real nice."

"Okay, I'll check it out." She watched him manuver himself out of the Jeep, wincing when he faltered and adjusted his grip on the door frame. Once safely out, he turned back to take the pot.

He smiled as she waved and drove away, turning her attention back to the road with a troubled sigh. When she had enrolled at the University of Georgia the previous fall, she'd been naive enough to think that everything at home would stay the same; that she would come back and slip into her place, like a missing puzzle piece.

Time, however, had a way of getting past her while she was down in Athens. There always seemed to be a test to study for, or another project to finish, or a friend who needed a tutor. The weeks had turned to months without her coming home to visit.

The changes in Uncle Jesse concerned her, even though the boys brushed them off. Last week, he'd fallen climbing up the steps to the porch (just tripped on a pine cone, he'd assured her) and banged his knee. Doc Appleby had checked him over, and cleared him of anything worse than a bruise and damaged pride, but to Daisy, who hadn't seen him since the summer, he seemed noticeably slower.

She was on Sand Creek Road, cutting south towards Highway 20 when she spied the white fender of Cletus' patrol car poking out from behind a stand of scrub brush. She pulled over and got out, closing the door softly. It had been a long time since she'd seen anyone in Hazzard but her family, and scaring Cletus was one of Hazzard's favorite pastimes. True to form, his head was lolling on the frame of the open window. He snored loudly.

She leaned down next to his ear. "Cletus!"

"Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!" His head smacked up against the top of the door, knocking his hat askew to cover his eyes. By the time he'd righted it, she had flattened herself against the rear door, out of his line of sight. He looked out the window across from the car and up towards the road. "What in the world?!" he whispered to himself. "I gotta stop eating them pickled turnips Lulu gave me."

"Cletus," laughed Daisy, walking back to his window, "you wouldn't know if I was speeding or not, sleeping out here like that."

"Daisy!" He pulled the latch on the door and climbed out, adjusting the belt under his generous belly. "You caught me," he confessed, with a happy blush. "I was napping. So you're back in Hazzard for the fair, huh? When didja get in?"

"Yesterday. I'm sorry, Cletus. I just had to scare you once for old time's sake."

"Oh shucks, Daisy," he said, shyly, looking down, "you can sneak up on me anytime you like!"

She shook her head. Poor Cletus. Although he'd forgiven her for tricking him into thinking that she was in love with him years ago, she suspected he thought she was just playing hard to get. Better to let him think it, though. It didn't cause any trouble, and it usually meant he was too flustered to remember Rosco had standing orders to arrest any and all Dukes without cause at all times.

"Oh Cletus," she simpered, "you're so sweet." She thought about giving him a kiss on the cheek but decided against it.

"Aww...," he brushed away her praise. "So, how's school going? I heard you were at the top of your class! At least that's how your Uncle Jesse tells it."

Now it was her turn to be embarrassed. She _had_ done well, but she felt uncomfortable spreading it around. It was already the first thing people asked about. "I didn't do too bad," she admitted. "I can't believe I'm a sophomore already!"

Cletus' radio crackled to life. _"Cletus? Cletus, come back."_

"I'd better get that, or Rosco'll think I was sleepin' again." he told Daisy, but made no move towards it, continuing to smile snappily at her.

"It was great to see you, sugar," she said, stepping forward and giving him a quick hug. He smelled of breath mints and sweat.

_"Cletus, you'd better not be sleeping again, you numbskull, or I'm gonna make you official judge of the rattlesnake chili cook off this year!"_

Cletus' smile faded, and he paled noticeably. "I'd better get that."

"Bye, Cletus. Tell Lulu I said 'hi'."

"I will, Daisy!" He waved as she turned to leave. "See you later!"

Capital City was not so much changed that she wouldn't recognize it, but she had to admit anything was an improvement. The city was three times larger than Hazzard, located at the southwestern corner of Drexel County, and had suffered from corrupt mayors for decades; long enough to drain the treasury dry and drive all the good jobs away. The post office, courthouse, and library each sported a fresh coat of white paint, though the roof of the post office sagged at both corners.

 _Like a clown's frown_ , she thought, then rolled her eyes at herself. "You have been studying _way_ too hard, Daisy Duke."

Studying wasn't her problem, though, it was her solution. It kept her from thinking of things she didn't want to think about, and she knew it. _Damn the torpedoes, mister, full speed ahead!_ It was when she had nothing to do that her mind began creeping back to the past. She swiped at a drop of Uncle Jesse's rattlesnake chili where it had dripped onto the passenger's seat.

Speaking of past snakes, she wondered where her ex-husband had slithered off to these days. Her stupidity still amazed her even two years later, and she vowed again, as she had vowed to herself a hundred times since he'd run off, that she would never, ever, let herself be suckered into falling in love again.

Last summer, sitting alone on what should have been the evening of their first anniversary, she realized that something had to change. She was thirty-two years old, too old to go waiting on her prince charming to come and sweep her off her feet, and if she stayed in Hazzard, pouring beer at the Boar's Nest, she was going to turn into a bitter, old woman some day. Better to be an old woman with a college degree and a career.

Bo, Luke, and Uncle Jesse had been all smiles and encouragement when she brought up the idea of going to college, and she suspected they knew as well as she did that she needed to get out of Hazzard. After a rough couple of months, they had even learned to keep house - at least better than while she'd been a deputy.

Thinking of Hazzard deputies brought _him_ to mind, and she instantly scrubbed out that line of thinking. She'd cry, and that wasn't on her agenda for today. There were better things to do than get caught up in self pity. After all, she had _tried_ to apologize, and it wasn't her fault that he wouldn't return her calls or that all her letters came back stamped 'UNDELIVERABLE'.

Two hours later, her grocery shopping was finished and she headed back down Highway 20. She had just crossed the county line when the call of ' _Lost Sheep to Shepherd'_ came over the CB.

She picked it up. "Lost Sheep, this is Bo Peep. Uncle Jesse's over at the fair. Is there something I can help you fellas with?"

 _"Uh, well... I reckon you can, Daisy,"_ Bo said, with some hesitation. _"Meet us at the Old Mill down Eagle Bluff Road in ten minutes."_

"I'll be there with bells on," she said, grateful for a distraction. Maybe Rosco had thought up some scheme against them for old times sake. Since Boss Hogg had passed away, the county's funds had gone up and corruption had gone down, but the sheriff still made up phony, trumped up charges against Bo and Luke on occasion. Mostly when there was nothing else to do.

The General Lee was already parked outside the mill by the time she arrived and, to her dismay, Hazzard #1 sat beside it. She grinned, thinking that something interesting must be going on for Rosco to be on their side today.

The rotten, wooden slat door hung off one hinge, and it squealed and scraped the dirt as she pulled it open. Inside, Bo, Luke, and Rosco were hunkered over a folding map of Hazzard County which lay stretched across a crate. She slipped in between Rosco and Bo.

"Hey fellas, what's going on?"

Luke looked up at her and shook his head. "It seems some of Boss's old friends came by and robbed the Boar's Nest."

"Ouuu geet!" exclaimed Rosco, the fringe of his gaudy epaulets bouncing as he shook his fist. "When I get my hands on those dirty crooks, I'm gonna cuff 'em and stuff 'em!"

"Thing is," said Bo, "Rosco changed the combination since Boss used it, so they cut a hole in the ceiling and lowered a tow truck crane in and took the whole dang safe instead!"

Daisy didn't quite see how that was possible, but you never could be too sure in Hazzard.

"They haven't left the county, yet," said Luke, "so there's still time. Arthur Sills saw their truck while he was junk hunting earlier. He says they're holed up at the old Dickerson place north of Partridge Farm." He stabbed his finger at a dark, grease spot on the map. "I figure if we all show up at the same time, it'll be easy to flush them out. Maybe they'll give up without a fight."

Partridge Farm was northeast of the Duke Farm, almost to Hollister, in an area Daisy wasn't very familiar with. "That's way up there, Luke," she said. "I sure hope you fellas know where you're going, 'cause I sure don't!"

Luke glanced over at her and nodded. "If we get split up, you follow Rosco. We'll meet again back at the Boar's Nest if we don't catch them."

"Sounds good, Luke."

He folded the map and put it in his pocket as they left the mill; Bo and Luke in the lead, followed by Daisy and then Rosco bringing up the rear. The dust flew back from the tires of the General Lee, spraying grit in Daisy's mouth, and she dropped back far enough to keep it out of her eyes.

As they passed the turn off to Partridge Farm, a blue sedan cut across their path, barely missing the General, and sped off down Ridgerunner Road to their left.

 _"That's one of 'em!"_ shouted Rosco over the radio. _"I seen him playing lookout at the Boar's Nest!"_

 _"Daisy, you and Rosco follow that sedan,"_ said Luke. _"Me and Bo'll keep going to the Dickerson Place."_

"I read you loud and clear, Luke."

 _"That's a 10-4,"_ said Rosco.

Daisy cut the wheel, sending Dixie's rear tires sliding around in a hail of gravel until she faced Ridgerunner Road, then took off with Rosco following close behind her. From her rear view mirror, she noticed him weaving crazily from one side of her to the other and wondered what on God's green earth he was doing.

 _"Daisy, wouldja get outta the way?"_ he spat over the radio. _"I'm the superior officer here, and I'm gonna take the lead!"_

She picked up the receiver. "No way, Rosco! I don't want a mouthful of dust. Don't worry, I'll let you 'cuff and stuff' them when I catch them."

Catching them would be easy, but she worried that stopping them might be nigh impossible. A steep ridge bordered the road to her right and a cavernous ravine fell off to her left. She wouldn't be able to get beside their car, and she didn't want to bump them and cause either of them to lose control. Ridgerunner Road had claimed the lives of scores of bootleggers and drunken teenagers, and once you flipped your car over the side, you could pretty well start trying on robes and halos.

The billowing dust blinded her as she closed in on the sedan, and there was a hairy moment when the Jeep fishtailed and the tires slipped on loose gravel at the edge of the road. The steering wheel shuddered in her hands before the wheels caught traction again, and she glanced to her left at the steep drop off. At last, the dirt road turned into blacktop, and she breathed a sigh of relief as the dust cleared and Dixie's tires grabbed the pavement.

Ahead, the ravine grew shallow and the afternoon sunlight flickered like a million candles off the surface of Crockett's Pond.

She heard Rosco shout a warning over the CB at the same time she saw the man in the back seat swing a gun out the driver's side window and fire.

Glass chips grazed her cheek and she squeezed her eyes shut as two white circles appeared in the passenger's side window. She slammed on the brakes, praying Rosco wouldn't rear end her, and the sound of the third shot was lost in the chaos as her left front tire exploded.

The steering wheel jerked violently out of her hands as the left side of the front axle smashed into the road, and then came a sickening feel of weightlessness as the CJ-7 flipped.

Time moved in slow motion around her, held aloft upside down as the ground became her sky. Long enough for her to whisper a prayer for her family and wonder how they would find Enos to tell him she was-


	2. An Unlikely Hero

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> She watched upon the rock-torn shore  
> Her lover's ship to spy  
> But summer came without his sails  
> And winter passed her by.
> 
> She went and asked the rushing tide,  
> 'Oh water, where is he?'  
> I hold him here within my breast,  
> replied the raging sea.
> 
> Come forth and see him if you will  
> I'll swiftly take you down  
> And you can be his Siren queen  
> With coral for a crown.  
> ~ the author

* * *

Rosco swerved and slowed as Daisy hit her brakes in front of him. The world moved in a blur of colors and motions as his right wheels climbed the embankment, tilting the police car sideways beside Daisy's Jeep.

And then...the road next to him was empty. There seemed to be no sound - that was the thing he would remember forever afterwards- like one of those old-timey picture shows with the captions running along the bottom. A slow, silent, timeless eternity as the shadow of Dixie raced unnaturally across his dash.

It flipped forward, end over end, and if they had been anywhere else in the county, or on any other road, that might have been the end of it. The Jeep landed hood first, not in the road, but on the steep grade of loose rocks and rolled; once, twice, over and over with such speed and force that each turn bore it aloft before it crashed down and rolled again... until it came to rest on its drivers side in the waters of Crockett Pond.

He didn't remember driving off the road or parking beside the pond; he didn't remember getting out or wading in. The water was only knee high where the Jeep had come to lay, and he slogged through it, terrified of what he would find and mumbling a prayer that she wouldn't already be dead. A sudden movement under the water scared him almost more than the silence, and seconds were lost while he stared, white-eyed, at it, until he realized that the movement meant life as Daisy emerged and struggled to pull herself up from the wreckage.

"Daisy!"

The mud sucked at his feet, and the water sloshed around his knees as he tried to move faster. She clutched at the Jeeps's roll cage, her head just above the water. Whether the metal was slick with mud or she fainted, Rosco didn't know, but her fingers slipped from their purchase before he made it to her, and with a splash she plunged back down beneath the muck.

"Oh Lord..." He reached blindly down into the murky water, his hands scrabbling for her. They found something soft and unyielding, and he grabbed her and pulled her out.

Water poured from her clothes and he lay her head back in the crook of his arm, pulling wet hair and strands of slimy algae from her face.

"Daisy! Daisy, oh please don't be dead..," he moaned, pressing trembling, callused fingers beneath her pale jaw and holding his breath until he felt the soft, fluttery beats of her pulse.

Relief that she was alive quickly dissolved into panic as he waited for her to draw a breath. He glanced at her mouth, trying to remember anything he had ever learned about resuscitation and cursed himself for being too lazy to take that first aid class down in Capital City the year before.

At once, she began to cough; brown, brackish water trickled from the corners of her mouth, and he turned her to the side, pounding on her back. When the coughing subsided, she gasped, dragging air into her starved lungs. He turned her to see her face, and she opened her eyes wide, looking up into his.

"Rosco," she croaked, hoarsely, "why're you crying?"

Her words made him laugh and cry even harder. "You done scared the living daylights outta me, Daisy Duke," he said. "Are you hurt bad anywhere?" He asked. "Can you stand up?"

She gave him a weak nod, and her right hand clutched at him for support as she got her legs underneath her.

He helped her lean back against the dented frame of the Jeep, smelling the burning oil where it had leaked onto the hot engine block. He swallowed back the queasiness when he noticed the serious fracture of her left arm where it hung by her side and instead focused on her face.

"What happened to me?"

"You flipped your Jeep over the ridge after them rotten crooks shot your tire out," he told her. "You're lucky to be alive! I thought you were dead for sure."

She didn't answer him. In fact, she wasn't even looking at him anymore. He turned around to peer over his shoulder where her line of sight had drifted, but there was nothing there.

"Daisy?" He snapped his fingers in front of her face, but she neither blinked, nor did her focus return. She began to shiver. "Daisy, what's wrong? You're scarin' me again."

Her eyes fluttered shut as her body sagged heavily against his, and he caught her before she could fall back into the water.

 _"Help!_ " he shouted, desperately. "Somebody help me!"

He looked back up at the road, but there was no one around but him, and he knew he couldn't wait for anyone else to show up. Earl was on call, which meant he would have to drive to the city garage to pick up the ambulance before he came, and Rosco was already closer to Capital City than Hazzard. Daisy needed help, and she needed it now.

He wasn't strong enough to pick her up and carry her _. Too old, too soft and flabby._ Instead, he hooked his arms under hers and dragged her backwards out of the pond towards his car. Twice he almost tripped in the mud which seemed to tug at Daisy's heels, trying to wrench her from his hands. His mind recalled terrifying old tales of muck monsters and swamp demons, pulling their victims under the water to drown them, and he hadn't thought of that since he was a child.

When at last they were free of the pond, he dragged her over to his car and hoisted her into the backseat, taking a cursory inventory of her injuries.

"Daisy," he muttered, miserably, "why'd you have to go and do that? Trying to stop them guys yourself. Dontcha know that's why I wanted in front of you?"

Gingerly, he tucked her broken arm beside her, feeling his gorge rise at the limb's unnatural position. Other than that, her face and arms were etched with a multitude of scratches, mostly superficial but a couple which might need stitches. There was not much blood, but he was more afraid of the blood he couldn't see and internal injuries. She was still shivering.

The only thing he had to keep her warm was Flash's dog blanket, and it wasn't nearly large enough. "Now, I know this ain't enough t' keep you warm," he said, "but I'll turn the heat way up." He tucked it as best he could around her shoulders before slamming the door and crawling into the driver's seat.

He drove back up to the road, both hands gripping the steering wheel in a white-knuckled vise. Running lights and sirens, he pushed the Dodge Monaco to its limits, slamming through the backroads of Hazzard County faster than he'd ever dared, even while chasing the General Lee. The car bucked as he turned and skidded onto the asphalt highway of County Road 20, and its water temperature needle shifted a notable tick towards "H" as the motor revved before the wheels caught.

The trees and fields blurred together on either side of him. Now on smoother roads, he grabbed frantically for the CB without taking his eyes off the road, knowing if he went much further he would be out of range of any of the Dukes.

"Bo..Luke..Jesse," he called, trying to hide the shaking in his voice. He'd never felt his heart beat so hard. "Any of you Dukes got your ears on? Come back."

 _Oh please, God, let them answer!_ If they didn't, he'd try and get hold of Cooter. There was no going back, not with Daisy in the back seat still out cold. He flashed a glance behind him, over the seat, but she hadn't moved and he couldn't tell anymore than he already knew.

_"Rosco? This here's Luke. We're over here at the Dickerson place. Those crooks ain't here, but their other car still is. We think we know where they're headed. If y'all meet us down by Stone Bridge, we'll cut them off."_

"Just...Just never you mind about that now," he told them. "Now boys, I...I don't rightly know how to tell you this, but I'm on my way down to Tri-County Hospital with Daisy. She's done flipped her Jeep over th' ridge."

The dead air that followed was almost worse than the telling, and he felt his hand on the wheel grow slick with sweat.

It was Bo who finally answered. _"Rosco, is this some sort of a joke?"_ His voice sounded hopeful, but even Rosco could hear the thread of fear behind it. _"Cause if this is a joke, it ain't funny!"_

"I wish it was, Bo. Honest to gosh, I do, but it's not. I've gotta let you go. My speedometer's clockin' at 95, and I need both hands on the wheel."

_"We're on our way, Rosco!"_

Oblivious in the back of Rosco's cruiser, Daisy made her way to Capital City for the second time that day.

* * *

Rosco cut his siren as he pulled into the circle drive in front of the Emergency entrance. A triage nurse ran out to assist as he opened the back passenger's side door.

"She's been in an accident!" he rushed. "I think she's breathing, but she's been unconscious for about thirty minutes.

The nurse crawled into the back seat beside Daisy and felt for a pulse and respirations. "I need to know exactly what happened,' she said. "Was she conscious at any point?" Before Rosco could answer, she yelled behind her to the other triage staff who had just come through the door, "Call Dr. Richardson stat! He'll need to check her before we can move her." Without turning her attention from Daisy, she said, "I'm sorry, Sheriff. What were you saying?"

"Her Jeep flipped and then landed in a pond," he said, "But...but, she was talkin' to me! And she stood up like she was fine!" In the background, he heard the page for Dr. Richardson relayed over the intercom.

"Did she say if anything hurt or complain about anything before she passed out?"

"No! Nothing! Her arm was broken, but..but she didn't seem to notice." He remember her staring over his shoulder. "Then, she went into some sort of trance, I guess you'd call it, staring out at nothing. And then she fainted. She started shivering, too," he added. He craned his neck over the woman where Daisy lay - so very, very still. "Can't you get her out of the car?"

"The doctor needs to check to make sure her neck's not broken before we move her," she explained. "He'll be here in just a minute."

No sooner had she said that, than a young man in light gray scrubs ran out the door and past the other triage staff who had wheeled a gurney beside the car. The nurse inside the car switched places with him, filling him in on what Rosco had told her, using terms he didn't understand like _decompensation_ and _normal oculocephalic reflex_ , as the doctor bent over Daisy and began to feel gently around the back of her head and neck.

"What's her name?"

"Daisy," offered Rosco. "Daisy Duke."

"Daisy?" the doctor asked her, loudly. "Daisy, can you hear me? You said she stood up and spoke, Sheriff?"

"Yeah, and right after the wreck, she was able to pull herself out of the water before she fell back in."

The doctor crawled back out of the car. "I don't feel anything in her neck or spinal column to worry about, and her respirations are good," he told the triage team. "Let's get her in, get an I.V. started and make sure she's stable, but she'll need an MRI and CT so call Life Fight and get them on the way. She's got an open fracture of the left proximal radius so let's support that side as much as we can. Sheriff, can you move your front seats up to give us more room?"

Rosco, happy to be doing something other than standing impotently and worrying over Daisy, scrambled to move the seats.

In a cumbersome balancing act, Dr. Richardson and his team managed to transfer her to the gurney with a minimum of jostling and rushed her through doors into the building, leaving him alone.

Blood had pooled on the hard vinyl of the backseat, presumably where her broken arm had rested, and run down into the carpet where it left a half-dollar sized, dark stain. He tossed Flash's blanket over it and slammed the door.

Standing in a daze, he suddenly realized his car was in the way. He moved it out of the Emergency area and into the parking lot before going inside himself. The automatic doors opened with swift, smooth efficiency, and the cool air conditioning hit him just before the biting smell of antiseptic.

Tri-County Hospital was small and old. It seemed clean enough, and the tile floor gleamed with new wax, but the posters offering advice on signs of stroke and the importance of hand washing were faded and curled at the edges. The fabric of the waiting room chairs was an off-colored peach that might have once been orange at some point.

Rosco's hands rang the brim of his hat convulsively, feeling the early twinges of a headache forming over his right eye, as he stepped up to the nurses' station.

One of them looked up at him and smiled sympathetically. "Sir, are you the officer who brought in Ms. Duke?"

"Yeah, that's me," he said. "Is she gonna be alright?"

"The triage unit is back there with her now, but I don't have any specifics," she said. "Do you know if her family has been contacted?"

"I let them know that I was bringing her here, but I had a head start on them."

She nodded and flipped open the chart in front of her, taking down the names of Jesse, Luke, and Bo Duke that he provided. Rosco wasn't completely sure about her birthday, sometime in the winter, but he was able to give basic information and her address and phone number.

"If you need to stay and wait for her family, they're going to Life Flight her to Grady Memorial in Atlanta, since we don't have an MRI available at Tri-County."

Rosco murmured a 'thanks', and dropped into one of the faded chairs beside the window, only then realizing that he was wet and covered in noxious smelling, half dried mud. Dixie rolling down the hill played on a constant loop in the back of his mind. All for a stolen safe that wasn't worth the trouble in the first place, just something to do to kill the monotony of life in Hazzard.

The only thing inside it had been Flash's dog bicuits.

* * *

_A/N: I totally stole "muck monsters and swamp demons" from The Muppet Musicians of Bremen._


	3. The Waiting Game

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Above the closed and fringéd lid  
> 'Neath which thy slumbering soul lies hid,  
> ...o'er the floor and down the wall,  
> Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall"  
> -The Sleeper, Edgar A. Poe

* * *

"There oughta be a dang sign on the door that says 'hurry up and wait' _,"_ growled Bo, throwing the _Car and Driver_ magazine down on the low table in front of them. His patience had run out just about the same time that Luke had taken to staring out the window.

Luke's outwardly calm appearance was a contrast to the internal thrashing he was giving himself. He muttered for Bo to quit griping without turning to look at him.

Both cast occasional glances towards Uncle Jesse, who seemed to age with each passing hour, sitting silent and ashen between them. Luke rubbed at his mouth as he watched the cars pull in and out of the south lot through the parking gate three stories below him, remembering the look on the man's face when they found him at Hazzard Square. Between himself and Bo, there had been an unspoken agreement that he would be the one to tell him, a burden of being the oldest, he supposed. Seeing his uncle's bright, cheery smile and knowing that what he had to say would rob him of that happiness, very nearly made him break down and cry before he could get a single word out.

The ride to Capital City had been quiet, each of them lost in their own thoughts and prayers, not knowing anything about Daisy's injuries. Simply the fact that Dixie had flipped over the ridge was enough to strike fear into the hearts of all three of them; anyone who had run moonshine in Hazzard or Choctaw counties knew someone who had died that way. The only solace was that the Jeep had a roll cage, and Daisy always wore her seatbelt.

Rosco had been waiting for them, a bundle of fried nerves covered in a crust of muck. While he recounted the story to them in a grim monotone, his were eyes far away, as though he was reliving it in his mind. He had seemed more himself before escorting them to Atlanta, finally having something to do with himself other than sit and worry.

At Grady Memorial, they had walked through the emergency entrance into a different kind of world, one far removed from Tri-County's farm accidents and bloody noses. A sea of people filled the hard-backed metal chairs, some with blankets and pillows, and everyone seemed to be talking at once. On a television in the far corner, the local ABC affiliate played at a volume no one could hear. With a heavy heart, Rosco had left them there and gone back to Hazzard, but not without extorting a promise from them to call him the second they knew anything.

By then, Daisy had been there for almost two hours, and after standing in line at the main nurse's station, they were shuttled up the elevator to a different waiting room - the _little_ one in the ICU, reserved for those who sat with quiet fear in their eyes and awaited news of their loved one's impending doom.

After watching the clock tick around an agonizingly slow twenty-three minutes, a woman wearing a name badge and a stethoscope called to them, and led them through the automatic double-doors separating the public waiting area from the family-only checkpoint and into a small room labeled "Family Meditation". There she informed them that Daisy was currently in radiology for a CT scan, and that the doctor was reviewing her MRI, EEG, and PET scans.

Needless to say, their fears were only heightened by the Scrabble-game worth of tests Daisy was undergoing.

Angry and tetchy from stress, Bo had snapped at her that they were running an awful lot of tests to not know what the heck was wrong. The woman had looked kindly at him, with patient understanding, and assured him that they were taking the best care they could of Daisy and that sometimes it took time when the answers weren't obvious.

That was when Luke knew it was serious.

Before she left, she warned them that it might be a long wait, but that the doctor would speak to them as soon as he had her results, In the meantime, they were welcome to use the family meditation room as long as the door was open and a doctor wasn't speaking with family inside. A coffeemaker sat on a table in one corner of the room, filling the air with the stale smell of day old, burnt Folgers.

The room had comfy couches and an easy chair, but it reminded Luke of a funeral parlor, and the feel of death settled on him like flakes of invisible, downy snow. He and Bo pressed a cup on coffee on Uncle Jesse before they went back to the outer waiting area where they now sat, looking at magazines that they didn't have the heart or concentration to actually read.

Luke's forehead touched the cool glass of the window as he nodded off, startling him awake. He looked at the clock to find it was almost 7:30 pm, and it had been three hours since the woman had come to talk to them. _This is bad_ , he thought to himself, wearily, _this is_ _really, really bad._

* * *

Jesse Duke rubbed his fingers absently against the styrofoam cup, the coffee having gone cold an hour before, or perhaps two now. He wasn't sure. Time was doing it's funny, slow dance around him, and he let his mind wander over the thoughts that tumbled through it.

There was little else to do, other than worry, and he'd never known that to help much in the long run. He'd worried over Lavinia, all those years ago as a younger man, and it hadn't helped at all. Her cancer hadn't cared that he was scared to death of being alone, or that he had no idea how to take care of three little kids, not to mention a straggler who also called him 'uncle'.

He'd made himself sick with worry. And then she was gone.

_But Daisy...oh, my baby girl..._

He squeezed his eyes shut and took a deep breath. If they started leaking now, he was afraid they would never stop, not until he had her with him safe and sound again.

"Duke family?"

He looked up at the small reception desk. It needed better lighting. _Those poor nurses must all have eye strain from the lights being kept so low,_ he thought. _A simple desk lamp was all it would take. Like the one_ _on the loan officer's desk in Hazzard's bank...  
_

"Uncle Jesse?" prompted Luke. "They just called us."

He wrenched his old body out of the seat and pulled his mind back into focus. "I know." He put his hand on Bo's shoulder as they followed the nurse back into that sad, little room, silently reminding the boy to watch his temper as much as to give himself strength.

"The doctor will be with you in just a minute," said the nurse. She was middle aged, her face round and cheery, with plump cheeks and short bouncy curls. A good face, thought Jesse. "Is there anything I can get you to drink while you wait? A coke or some orange juice? It gets awfully dry in here."

"If you've got a Coke, I'd be much obliged," said Luke.

"Me too," said Bo, "If it ain't too much trouble?"

"Absolutely," she said, the warm tone of her voice putting them at ease, at least where the Cokes were concerned. "We keep a supply of drinks back here so families don't have to go down to the cafeteria. We've got applesauce, too, and some granola bars, just in case you aren't able to get anything for a while. I'll be right back."

In no more time than it took him to slip his pocket watch out and take a quick peek at the time, she was back with three Cokes. "I brought an extra one, Mr. Duke," she said, addressing him, "just in case you wanted one later. I can take that cup, if you're finished with it."

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, softly, feeling a catch in his voice. "That's mighty kind of you."

She left again and closed the door behind her, leaving them alone. Like a leaden blanket, the silence pressed down upon them, each sensing that it was the last calm of ignorance before the storm of knowing. Neither of the boys spoke, and Jesse didn't feel like talking either, but keeping this family together and their spirits pointed in the right direction had been his solemn duty for over two decades, and he couldn't let it slide now.

"Boys, we'll get through this," he told them, patting their hands and dredging up the last of his energy. "Whatever it is, there ain't been nothin' that Dukes couldn't overcome by sticking together."

Bo picked his head up and nodded gravely, his blue eyes meeting his uncle's. Jesse thought he looked very young and lost, not so different from the child who had come to live with them when he was two, ripped from his mother's arms in the middle of a Georgia twister. The hand of God had been on him him that day, landing him safely in the bushes while his parents lay buried beneath the rubble.

Luke started to say something, but at that moment the door opened, and whatever it might have been stayed unspoken as the doctor walked in.

His olive complexion stood in stark contrast to his white lab coat, with deep set eyes under a heavy brow, and the first dusting of white at his temples in his otherwise jet, black hair. Jesse thought he was probably mid-forties or pushing fifty.

"Hi, Mr. Duke, I'm Dr. Haglen," he said, shaking his hand. "I'm one of the neurosurgeons here at Grady Memorial." He turned and shook Luke and Bo's hands, as well, asking them each their names in turn, then pulled up a wooden chair from beside the wall and sat down in front of them. "It's nice to meet y'all," he began. "I wanted to come and give you an update on Daisy. I'm sorry you've had to wait so long. We try and cover all our bases, and sometimes it takes longer than we would like to be able to rule out any problems."

"Is she awake?" Luke asked.

"She hasn't woken up, yet," he said, "but I just saw her, and other than her broken arm, she doesn't have any visible signs of trauma. The MRI was able to rule out any internal bleeding or life-threatening injuries."

Bo and Luke breathed a collected sigh of relief, but Jesse, long used to 'doctor speak' remembered that the good news always came first.

"We didn't see what happened first hand," said Bo. "So, we weren't sure how bad it was."

Dr. Haglen nodded. "Any time there's an accident, an MRI is always the first test that we run, just to make sure that there isn't something more going on that we can't see. Daisy did have to have surgery on her arm, so don't be alarmed when you see the pins and metal contraption supporting it. Everything went really well, and we'll watch it closely over the next couple days to make sure it's healing correctly." He opened the folder he had brought with him. "What I mostly wanted to talk with you about are the results we found from the EEG and the second MRI."

"Was there something wrong with the first MRI?" asked Luke.

"No, not at all," he explained, "but the first MRI is pretty basic, and it's mainly to check for any larger brain bleeds or internal injuries. After Daisy's EEG, we decided to take a closer look at some smaller structures that the first MRI wasn't programmed to look at."

"An EEG." Jesse recognized the name, but couldn't remember what it was for. "Is that like one of those brain wave tests?"

"Yes, that's exactly what it looks like," he said. "Just like if you hook a battery up to a ammeter, an EEG measures electrical currents inside the brain. Sometimes, these currents get confused and interrupt the normal signals. This can happen for a variety of reasons, and in Daisy's case, her EEG showed a small area inside her brain with increased electrical activity." He paused for a second. "This leads us to believe that, shortly after the accident, Daisy had at least one seizure."

He was quiet for a moment, letting the news sink into the three of them. Jesse was stunned, a seizure hadn't crossed his mind, and he wasn't sure if it was better or worse than any of the other possibilities he had considered. The only person he knew who'd had one was Mabel Foust's daughter who had epilepsy. Then his mind began the process of breaking the information down, of compartmentalizing the facts and looking at options. Twenty four years after he'd lost his wife, he instinctively still knew the old routine.

"Are you sure?" he asked.

The doctor nodded, gravely. "During the second MRI, we focused on the part of the brain which showed the abnormal activity on the EEG. Now, most of the time when a seizure occurs in someone who has no history of them, it causes little to no lasting damage. However, in studying the scans of Daisy's brain, I did find a very small lesion, about two millimeters long, in the section that we call the temporal lobe." He took a drawing from the folder showing the different areas inside of the brain and pointed to a curled area in the center. "The temporal lobe contains some very important structures where the brain stores and makes memories."

Luke looked up at the doctor. "Did she hit her head during the accident?"

"Rosco didn't say nothing about her hitting her head," added Bo. "He said she was talking to him and everything!"

The doctor shook his head. "I didn't find any evidence of her having hit her head," he assured them, "although there is some minor swelling at right side of her brain that we're watching." He tapped gently above his right ear. "More than likely, the seizure was caused by the centripetal force of her Jeep rolling down the hill." With his finger, he made a looping gesture, like a sideways hula-hoop. He closed the folder and leaned forward. the seriousness of what he was about to say evident to each of them. "I want you to know what to expect when she does wake up, though. Confusion and some memory loss surrounding the time of an accident is completely normal, and it may take her a few days to get her bearings before we can begin to gauge what, if any, deficiencies have occurred. I'll talk to her when she wakes up, and let her know what's happening."

"So, this thing with the lesion on her brain," Luke said, "it's where memories are stored? Does that mean she might not be able to remember anything? I thought you had to get hit on the head to have amnesia."

"That's a good question, Luke, and one that there's a lot of misconception about. Real amnesia isn't like it is in the movies or on television," he explained. "There's three basic types of memory loss and you can have varying severities or a combination of them."

He took a blank sheet of paper and the pen from the breast pocket of his lab coat and drew an "X" in the middle. On the left side, he made an arrow pointing backwards, away from the X, then turned the paper around so that it was facing up for the three of them.

"The first type, which is the kind that you hear about in books and movies, is called retrograde amnesia. This affects the person's ability to recall details of past events. However, unlike Hollywood's take on it, patients don't usually loose everything from their past. The loss can be limited to a few weeks or months, or it can be years, depending on the location of the damage." He drew a line downwards, cutting through the arrow, and shaded between the X and the line. "Also, the more recent the memory, the more likely it is to be lost. Older memories contain much more than what happened; they contain sounds, smells, and emotions. These other sensations get stored in several different areas of the brain, so older memories usually remain unaffected."

To the right side of the X, he traced another arrow, pointing forward.

"The second kind of memory loss which is also very common, is anterograde amnesia, which is the inability to make new memories. This can vary a lot depending on the severity of the injury. Some people may not be able to hold onto any new information more than a few minutes, while some people simply have trouble retaining facts if given in large chunks. The third kind, which is uncommon, is autobiographical amnesia." He circled the X itself. "This is where the person completely forgets who they are, but this involves some pretty extensive brain injuries, and we wouldn't expect that with Daisy."

He stopped talking, while each of them dealt with the blitz of information and bad news in their own ways. Outside the door, there was a page over the intercom and down the hall, an alarm began to blare stridently.

"I know it must be really hard to hear this all at once," he apologized, "but we're going to be with you every step of the way, and we can talk more about it later after you've had a chance to process everything. Are there any questions that I can answer for you right now?"

There was only one that was pressing on Jesse Duke's mind at that moment, "When will we be able to see her?"

"They were just bringing her back up here to ICU when I came in to talk with you," he said. "After the nurses make sure she's comfortable, and we've double checked her vitals, you can come in and stay with her, probably in about an hour. The ICU is limited to two people at a time, but family is welcome 24 hours a day. Often, family members will set up a routine so that someone can get some sleep while another stays in the room."

The thought of being able to see her sooner than later perked up all their spirits.

"So, it sounds like we need to be prepared for more than a couple days here," said Luke. "Uncle Jesse, if you and Bo want to go in first when she's ready, I'll call Rosco and Cooter and let them know about everything."

Dr. Haglen stood and shook hands once more with each of them. "If y'all think of anything else, don't hesitate to ask. You'll probably see a lot of me, and when I'm not here, Dr. England will be the neurologist on staff, and you'll meet him tomorrow."

"Well, thanks a lot for talking with us, Dr. Haglen," said Bo. "We'll probably have some more questions thought up by tomorrow."

"Sounds good, Bo," he said, "just let me know."

With a mission to call Rosco and Cooter, Luke headed for the elevators down the hall from the ICU, and Bo took up his perch in the waiting room until they were able to see Daisy. Jesse mentally ticked off the people who ought to be notified, knowing that between Rosco and Cooter, most everyone in Hazzard would find out quickly enough.

There was, however, one person who wouldn't hear about it through the HazzardNet. He debated so long with himself over what to do, he found himself standing at the reception desk without realizing he had even gotten up from his seat.

The thoughtful nurse from earlier smiled up at him. "Can I help you with anything, Mr. Duke?"

"Well, um...I was wondering, is there a place up here that I can make a long distance call?"

"Oh sure!" she said. "There's a phone in the family room you can use. We just ask that you try and keep calls under five minutes, in case someone needs the room."

"I'm much obliged, ma'am."

The automatic doors jerked and opened when he pushed the button on the side of the wall, letting out a blast of chilly air mixed with the scent of antiseptic and, underneath, a smell that only someone who has known the slow creep of death could identify.

In the family room, the tan, multi-line phone shared a small end table with a lamp and a Gideon Bible. Taped to the front was a laminated card which read, ' _For an outside line, press #9 and wait for a dial tone'._

Taking a seat on the couch next to it, he picked up the reliever, warring again with himself over whether or not it was a good idea. There had been so much water under that bridge, and, after two years, perhaps it was better left alone. Or perhaps not. After a moment, he decided that, in the end, it wasn't his decision to make. With a hand that trembled slightly, he hit "9", and then dialed an emergency contact number he'd never thought he'd call. Why he'd memorized it, he couldn't say...


	4. Meetings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Far away, Long ago,  
> Glowing dim as an ember,  
> Things my heart used to know,  
> Things it yearns to remember..."  
> -Deana Carter, "Once Upon a December"

* * *

_**Sunday, October 25th, 1987** _

The morning sun shone warm through her bedroom window, blossoming in red bursts beneath the lids of her closed eyes. This was Daisy's favorite time of day; one of those rare mornings when she woke before anyone knocked on her door to make sure she was up and dressed for school, the perfect time for daydreaming and wool-gathering. She let the warmth carry her almost to the edge of sleep, but she couldn't get comfortable again.

Little by little, the world crept in around her, bringing details which didn't fit into her bedroom in the farmhouse off Mill Road.

The pillow definitely didn't feel right. Why, it was so _scratchy_! Aunt Lavinia never used starch on the pillow cases...although there was that one time when she had been chasing something and had tipped the bottle of slimy, pink goop over into an entire basket of new washing... and the maple tree blocked the sun from ever shining into her window.

Oh, but she was so _tired_. Uncle Jesse hadn't told her to get up, yet, so maybe she was still dreaming. Even now, the edges of those previous thoughts were softening. Just another ten minutes, and then she'd open her eyes and get out of bed...

* * *

The beeping woke her like a douse of cold water, and her first thought was that she had missed the bus. Her eyes flew open to see two strangers near her. One was obviously a doctor, and, for some reason, she seemed to be in a hospital. It was a funny little room with a curtain instead of a door. Strange machines beeped and whirred, and the air smelled like Bactine. She tried to remember if she'd been hurt or sick and came up empty.

The doctor smiled down at her. "Hi there!" he said, cheerfully. "I'm Doctor Haglen, and this is Doctor James." He nodded towards a woman in a white lab coat like himself. "How are you feeling this morning?"

"Iughk-" She stopped and dry coughed, trying to clear the thick saliva out of her throat.

The doctor picked up a plastic drink container with a straw from the bedside table. "Can you take a drink?"

She nodded and sipped the cool water, waking up enough to take better stock of herself. Her left arm was gussied up in some sort of a bandage surrounded by a round, metal frame with rods sticking down through her skin. It made her stomach feel funny to look at the contraption – kind of like one of those magician's boxes where they cut the lady in half. She wiggled her fingers, and the tips, which peeked out from the bandages, moved sluggishly. They felt tingly, like they were very far away and didn't really belong to her.

She tried her voice again. "Am I sick? Is my arm gonna be okay?"

Dr. Haglen handed the water to Dr. James who set it back down on the table. "No, you're not sick," he replied, with a friendly smile. Daisy thought he had a kind voice, soft and furry-like. "You had an accident, and it's very normal for you not to remember it if you don't. That scary looking frame around your arm is just keeping the bones still so it will heal."

"Was it on my bike? My Uncle Jesse's always saying I'm gonna kill myself if I don't stop trying to stand up on the seat of my bike." She'd thought he was just kidding.

"No, it wasn't on your bike. You were in a car."

"A car?" Her heart began to beat a little faster as she thought of the soft, gray upholstery of Uncle Jesse's Chrysler New Yorker. The constant beeping in the background began to speed up. "Is everyone else okay?"

"Yes, your family is fine," he assured her. "You were the only one in the vehicle." He scribbled something down on a clipboard and lay it on her table. "I'm going to ask you a couple of questions, and some of them may seem a little silly, is that alright?"

"Umm… Okay, I guess."

"Great! First off, can you tell me your name?"

"Daisy Duke. Daisy _Mae_ Duke." Her voice was stronger now that she'd been speaking, but it sounded strange to her, like she had a cold. "Are my aunt and uncle here?"

Confusion passed briefly over his face before it cleared. "Your uncle and your cousins are here, and they'll be back to sit with you in a little while. I think they went down to get some breakfast." He held up the end of his stethoscope. "Do you mind if I take your blood pressure and listen to your heart?"

She shook her head, only then feeling the wires attached to her head. "Why're there wires coming out of my head!?"

"They're just taped in place," he explained, gently deflecting her hand away from where she was tugging on one. "Kind of like how I can listen to your heart with my stethoscope, those wires are attached to a machine that records electrical patterns in your brain. How is your head feeling? Any headaches? Sick at your stomach?"

"No," she said, "I don't feel sick. Just kind of queasy when I look at my arm." She pointed to a spot just above her right temple. "My head hurts a little right here, but not too badly."

He leaned over to where the wires ran into a machine where rows of zig-zags traveled across the screen, then turned towards the other doctor behind him. "We can go ahead and disconnect the EEG," he told her, "and we'll do a follow up MRI this afternoon just make sure and check out the anterior temporal, but I didn't see anything concerning on the tracing overnight." He raised her bed to a sitting position, then placed the stethoscope against her chest and asked her to breath in and out deeply as he moved it around. "Everything sounds normal with your lungs, Miss Duke."

He took the blood pressure cuff and slipped it around her right arm, pumped it up and then listened with his stethoscope as the air whooshed softly out. Daisy watched his face, still wondering what had happened to her and how she had been the only one to be in a car accident. He smiled as he pulled apart the velcro holding on the cuff.

"Your blood pressure looks good, too."

"So... Can I go home, then?" she asked. "Since I don't feel sick or anything."

He tilted his head and considered her. "I don't think you'll be in here for very long, Miss Duke," he said. "But there are a couple of tests we need to run before we can let you go home, and we have to make sure your arm is healing correctly. It might be a week or so. Is that alright?"

As long as she felt okay and the doctor said she was fine, at least it got her out of school and doing chores. "Sure, okay," she agreed, with a shrug. "Can I eat something, though? I'm awful hungry."

"Absolutely. I just have a few more questions, and then I'll have someone come in and see what we've got that you'd like to eat." He took a notecard from his pocket and with a red pen, drew a triangle. "Daisy, can you tell me what shape I've drawn on this notecard?"

"Uh, a triangle," she said, perplexed.

"Great! And what color is it?"

"Red." These were, without a doubt, the strangest questions she'd ever been asked.

"That's right. Now, I'm going to put this away, and in a few minutes, I want you to try and remember the color and the shape that's on the card." He stuck the card in a pocket of his labcoat. "But first, I want to ask you a little bit about yourself. Can you tell me where you live?"

"In Hazzard, but I don't really live in town. We live in a farmhouse way down Mill Road, almost to Eagle Bluff, but not quite that far."

"Okay, and who do you live with? Can you name them?"

She ticked off them off on her fingers. "Well, there's my uncle, Jesse, and my aunt, Lavinia. Her real name's Martha, but she said she always hated it," she confided to him, "so she goes by Lavinia 'cause that's her middle name, then there's Luke," she rolled her eyes. "He likes to think he's the one in charge of everything, just because he's two years older than me. He's always bossing me around. Bo's the youngest."

"And how old were you at your last birthday?"

She thought back, but the birthday that came to mind couldn't have been her last one. For the first time, the doctor's question threw her. She tried to recall the last cake her aunt had made her, but the one she so clearly remembered - the one into which Bo had squeezed the entire bottle of blue food coloring - had been her tenth birthday. That didn't _feel_ right. She didn't feel ten...or even twelve. Her mind counted upwards, all the way to twenty, but none of the numbers seemed to fit.

The doctor reached over and turned the sound off on the heart rate monitor. "That's okay, Daisy," he said, gently, "we can talk about it again, later."

"I...I should know that," she insisted, then looked up at the doctor, feeling very lost and small. "Is there something wrong with me...other than my arm?"

"After an accident, things can seem confusing," he explained. "The brain is very amazing, but sometimes it can be a little tricky. After we move you out of ICU, we'll be giving you some tests - and some of them will probably seem pretty silly, like the card I put in my pocket. Speaking of which, can you tell me what color and shape the drawing was on the card?"

"A triangle," she said, then hesitated. "And...I think it was red?"

"Correct," he smiled, pulling it out of his pocket and showing it to her. "And what I was telling you about being confused, some of that is normal and some of it may not be. The important thing is that you tell us when something isn't clear. That will help us understand what's going on better so we can get you home faster." He checked his watch. "So... How about that breakfast?"

Daisy nodded, apprehensively, not looking forward to more confusion. "That sounds good."

* * *

When Bo, Luke, and Uncle Jesse came back from the cafeteria a half hour later, a nurse was waiting to take them to the family room. Dr. Haglen wanted to talk with them before they went to sit with Daisy.

Luke had swapped places with Bo around 2:00 am. Uncle Jesse had nodded off a few times in the recliner by the bed, but it was hard to get comfortable in the ICU, knowing that the lives behind other curtains hung in the balance. The night had been broken often by codes and the beeping of alarms, followed by a flurry of activity and the sound of feet moving swiftly through the corridors.

The only external signs of anything amiss with Daisy were the halo around her broken arm and the EEG wires connected to the machine behind her bed. Her face was crisscrossed with scratches, some deeper than others, though nothing worse than she'd had when they were kids.

Dr. Haglen had come in several times through the night to study the EEG readings, assuring them each time that everything looked normal, with no new seizures, and every hour a nurse came to check her vitals and take her temperature. Luke didn't know why they were so concerned about her temperature - she'd had a seizure, not a cold. He'd finally asked the nurse, and she had explained that it was to monitor for infection in her arm. The orthopedic surgeon had had to clear away quite a bit of skin damaged by the mud and pond water.

 _Just one more thing to worry about_ , he'd thought.

The wait was short this time and Dr. Haglen smiled at them as he opened the door. "I know it was a long night for you folks," he said, "but I wanted to talk to you before you went back into Daisy's room."

Bo wasted no time pouncing on him. "Is she awake?"

"She's awake and alert—" He laughed as he was interrupted by Bo's 'whoop' of joy. "However, remember we talked about there might be some confusion after her accident?"

Luke remembered all too well. "The memory stuff?"

The doctor nodded. "I'm at a disadvantage, not knowing your family very well," he apologized. "Does she have an aunt named Lavinia?"

"She did," said Jesse, "but she passed away back in '63."

Bo thought it strange that his aunt would have come up in conversation and said so.

"Daisy mentioned her when I asked her to name who she lives with." He held up his hand to calm their alarm. "Now, it's hard to say if this is due to an actual memory impairment, or simply the common confusion which is normal after an accident."

"Well, was there anything else that she said that didn't seem right?" Luke, who had experienced the muddled thinking after a bad concussion first hand, didn't think it sounded normal at all.

"Only that she thought she might have broken her arm by falling off of her bike," he answered. "and she couldn't come up with an answer when I asked her age. The not knowing did appear to upset her, We have a follow up MRI scheduled after lunch which should tell us more."

"Well," said Jesse, "I reckon she's always been in the middle of things. It'll be hard for her not to understand what's going on."

"And that's why we'll need to start on the neurological testing as soon as she's able," he said. "It's important for us to find out what's really happening. I explained to her that if she's confused, she needs to tell someone. Seeing into the mind isn't an exact science, and sometimes what the patient tells us is more important that anything a machine can show."

"You've got that right," agreed Luke, wondering if this was what Uncle Jesse called "doctor speak" or if they really didn't know much about the brain. That in itself was a scary thought. "Should we tell her what happened, if she asks?"

"If she asks," he said. "But if she's having trouble processing it, try not to overwhelm her with too many details." He hesitated a moment, before continuing. "With the memory loss that she's experiencing, it would be best if, when she goes home, she has a neutral place in which to heal and begin to form new connections with her family and friends. It's been my experience that personal effects associated with lost memories can cause anxiety or depression. That means removing any photos, journals, letters; that sort of thing."

Luke pictured Daisy's room, decorated with mementos stretching all the way back to grade school. "I never woulda thought of that," he admitted, "but it makes sense." He turned to his uncle and cousin. "If y'all want to stay the night here, I'll go home, get some boxes, and get started."

"Shoot, cuz," said Bo, "I know we've got to, but it don't seem right, packing up Daisy's stuff." He ruffled his hair, nervously. "I guess you can go in first with Uncle Jesse, then. I'll switch with you in an hour."

Luke patted him on the back, wondering if it might not be better for Uncle Jesse to go in alone, but wanting to see Daisy awake. "You got it, Bo."

* * *

Hospital food was definitely lacking something, thought Daisy. She was pretty sure it was the flavor. The ICU's choices were limited to bland straight up or bland with fake butter. She tossed the other half of the toast back down onto the plate as the door opened.

The last bite stuck in her throat, and tears welled in her eyes at her uncle's haggard appearance. "Why, Uncle Jesse!" she cried. "What's happened to you!?" He looked as if he'd aged twenty years in the span of a day! How much stress did it take for a man's hair to turn white so fast? She'd just bet that no good, rotten cop had been chasing him again.

He came over to her bedside, wiping his eyes against his sleeve before he patted her hand. "Nothin's wrong, Daisy," he laughed, through his tears. "Nothin' at all, now, baby girl. I'm just awful happy to see you sitting up and talking to me. How're you feeling?"

"Okay, I guess," she said, indifferently, more worried about him than herself, "except for my arm." She tried to raise it, and remembered that she couldn't. "You're the one who looks like you need to be in here! The doctor said I was the only one in the accident."

"Uncle Jesse's been here sitting by your bed all night worrying about you," chided the dark-haired man who had come in behind him. "He's alright, just tired."

She pushed the rolling table with the stale toast away from the bed and turned her attention to him. "Sorry, mister, the doctor said I might be confused since I had an accident. Who are you?" Maybe he was a cousin, she thought. She had a lot of those.

He and Uncle Jesse shared a startled look between them before he answered. "Daisy, it's me...Luke."

Anger bubbled up from deep inside of her. "Real funny, mister." She shimmied around until she sat straighter in the bed. "You look an awful lot like a Duke, but you picked the wrong cousin to pretend to be. Are you one of Uncle Harry's boys?" Uncle Jesse's brother, Harry, had black hair.

"Now, Daisy, just...just take it easy," soothed her uncle. "This _is_ Luke." He gave her hand a squeeze, as she shook her head. "The doctor said you were having some trouble sorting things out right now."

"Uncle Jesse, I can't believe you'd go along with this crazy joke!" She pulled her hand out from under his and tucked it against her side as though she were crossing her arms, minus her left one, while 'Luke' stared at her as if she'd grown an extra head. "Why, he doesn't even _look_ like Luke."

"What about me doesn't look right?"

For someone playing a trick, he certainly didn't seem angry that she wasn't buying it. "Well, for one thing, Luke doesn't play tricks on people 'cause he's got no sense of humor," she scoffed. "And, anyway, Luke's just a kid." She scrutinized the lines around his eyes. "You've gotta be going on fifty."

" _Fifty_!?"

Uncle Jesse's face grew more serious. "Honey, this _is_ Luke. He's not a kid, anymore."

"Alright then." She could put an end to this game real quick. "If you're Luke, show me something with your name on it."

He glanced at Uncle Jesse, and Daisy could read the question that passed between them loud and clear as the man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a worn, leather wallet. He took out a card and handed her a driver's license for 'Lukas K Duke' with an address of 1217 Mill Creek Road, Hazzard, Georgia. The picture matched the man beside her uncle.

She stared between the two of them in shock. "Is this a dream?" she heard herself ask. Then it hit her. "Have I been in a coma, Uncle Jesse?" She imagined herself, like a princess in a fairlytale, sleeping peacefully as the years passed by around her, waiting for her Prince Charming to come and wake her with a kiss. "How many years have I been asleep?"

"You weren't in a coma," said Luke. "That's not what the doctor said, anyway. You were only out for about ten hours, and part of that time was because they put you under to set your arm."

"But...but..." She looked back at Uncle Jesse, at his white hair and careworn face, and then at Luke, who was far older than she could account for him being.

No, she just couldn't accept it.

Uncle Jesse smoothed the hair back from her forehead, and she closed her eyes, concentrating on the familiarity of the gesture and his weathered, callused hand. "The doctor said you might have some trouble remembering things, Daisy" he said, gently. "But we'll figure it out. You being safe and sound is the most important thing right now."

She shook her head in anguish, though his words soothed the worst of her fears. The doctor had mentioned something about being confused, hadn't he? So, that meant this was only temporary, just until her brain got back to normal, although she couldn't seem to recall what 'normal' was right now.

"Uncle Jesse?"

"Yeah, baby?"

"Where's Aunt Lavinia?"


	5. Partings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I took the wings of morning  
> and flew far away from home,  
> Would you chase me to the sea, love,  
> Bring me back where I belong?
> 
> Oh, I cannot brave the sea, love!  
> Our distance is too wide.  
> And my fate's forever planted  
> on this lonely mountainside.  
> ~the author

Uncle Jesse's eyes met hers, and an unspeakable grief flooded Daisy's heart as she pictured her Aunt Lavinia's face, as though some part of her innately _knew_ that she was gone. She saw her uncle gather his emotions and take a deep breath before he answered.

"Honey, she's gone on to Heaven," he said, tenderly, "a long, long time ago."

She shook her head. "No, that's not true!" she yelled. She squeezed her eyes shut and commanded herself to wake up, but nothing changed. Around her, the sounds of the hospital went on. And on.

Uncle Jesse leaned over and kissed her forehead, angling himself carefully around her I.V. lines and EEG wires. She pressed her face into the soft, worn denim of his overalls, not wanting to blubber like a baby in front of them. The sobs came anyway, racking her shoulders, and an aching throb began on the right side of her head. "I don't want to be here, Uncle Jesse. I wanna go home."

"I know, baby," he soothed. "I'm sorry."

A nurse, alerted by Daisy's outburst swept into the room and checked the blood pressure monitor which was beeping softly in the background.

Luke turned to her. "Sorry, ma'am. She's kinda out of sorts."

"We're used to it," the nurse assured him. "But crying can exacerbate brain swelling, so anything you can do to calm her would be wise right now."

"Yes, ma'am. We'll try our best."

"Did it hurt?" Daisy asked her uncle, oblivious to Luke and the nurse, her voice muffled against his chest.

"No," he assured her, "not at the end."

She took a deep breath and he let her go, wincing as he stood up straight. A beige curtain hung between the partitions of her room, like a divider between two worlds, and she felt if she could just see past it, all would be made clear. "I don't feel like she's gone," she told him. "It's like she's standing on the other side of that curtain, waiting to come in. I feel like I saw her just last night, or maybe this morning." Daisy thought back to the last memory of her aunt, canning tomatoes in the sunlit kitchen. It felt like yesterday, and there was nothing missing between it and the present. "This confusion and forgetting...it'll go away, won't it?"

He took his red handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her tear stained cheeks. "Dr. Haglen said that the brain can do strange things sometimes," he said. "Even forget things. Let's give it a little more time to heal."

"I guess I can be patient," she said. "Is it alright to ask questions?"

"I expect it'd be hard to stop you," answered Luke.

She frowned at him, still not trusting this 'too old to be Luke' version of her cousin. "I reckon you're right."

* * *

Bo had come in an hour later to trade places with his cousin, ans she saw the look 'Luke' had given him as he was leaving. It grated on her. Her older cousin had always treated her like a child who didn't know any better, and apparently nothing had changed. Jerk.

She couldn't account for him being an adult, but Bo was easier for Daisy to accept. His face still had the same boyish charm she remembered, and there was a glint in his eye – some trace of mischief, or innocence, perhaps - that felt so familiar, she found herself aching to ruffle his blonde hair like she usually did.

"You know, Daisy," he said, cheerfully, "you owe me ten dollars. I thought I'd let you know, in case you've forgotten, that is."

She shook her head and let herself laugh at him and his expression of wide-eyed innocence. "I _do_ remember that I write everything down in the journal I keep under my bed, Beauregard Duke," she told him. "I'll just check on that when I get outta here."

By Sunday evening, she had wheedled Luke's age out of Uncle Jesse as a roundabout way of extrapolating her own. She couldn't help but be disappointed with her thirty-two years. Hadn't she done _anything_ worthwhile? She clearly remembered thinking _(just the other day)_ that thirty meant you were an old lady and that she'd be married with a couple of kids by then.

After Bo left to find something for supper, and while Uncle Jesse napped in the recliner beside her bed, she thought about the enormous gap in time between where her memories ended and the present, and of all the things she had once planned to fill that time with.

They told her that she had been studying Biology at the University of Georgia for three semesters, and she guessed that was a start. Still, she had to wonder what had happened to her dreams of becoming a famous singer and traveling the world. Maybe the singing gig wouldn't have worked out, but she found it hard to believe she still lived with her uncle and cousins in Hazzard.

She looked out the window where night had fallen and wished she could see the stars beyond the glass. Was this all there was to life? Just like every other moonshiner's kid, she'd gotten trapped by the hills and never gotten out. It was a depressing thought.

And then, after four generations, her family had stopped running moonshine! Uncle Jesse had told her the whole story from start to finish of why they had closed down the still. His eyes had seemed sad, though, and she wondered if he missed it terribly. She supposed he had had time to get over it, long enough to form a tenuous friendship with the cops in Hazzard: Rosco and Cletus. She wouldn't recognize Cletus when she met him later that week, but Rosco...

Rosco turned out to be the bright spot among all the blank pages and confusion. It was Monday, just after lunch, and Bo had flipped back her curtain and strolled into the ICU cubicle.

"Hey, Daisy, I brought someone new to visit you," he grinned. "I hope you don't mind. He did sorta save your life."

She smirked back at him. "As long as he ain't tryin' to swindle me outta money like you are."

"Shucks, Daisy!" he laughed. "You can't blame a guy for trying. Hey," he called to the other side of the divider. "She said she didn't care, so come on in."

A police officer side-stepped the curtain. In his hands, he held a black hat, the brim of which he worked with nervous fingers.

" _Rosco_..."

Both of them stared at her in confusion. "Wait, you know him?" asked Bo.

She shook her head, just as bewildered. "I'm not sure why I thought that was his name." She stared at the man. "Is it?"

"Uh, well...yeah... That's my name. I didn't figure on you remembering, since Bo said you...nyhun-" He gave a quirky, nervous murmur, and fell silent.

"I don't understand how I knew," she told him. "You look _familiar,_ I guess, except that's not really it, either." She shook her head. "I can't explain it."

"You know, I was there with you after you had your accident," he reckoned. "Maybe it's because of that. Maybe..." His blue eyes grew misty, and he looked down at his hat. "I'm awful glad you're alright, Daisy, I was worried about you. I'll...uh...I'll go tell Jesse he can come back in."

With that, he flipped the curtain back and hurried away, leaving her alone with a puzzled Bo.

He turned back to her. "Well, that was different."

"If you find something about me that's normal these days," she muttered, "let me know."

* * *

On Tuesday morning, Dr Haglen allowed both Luke and Bo together with Uncle Jesse into Daisy's ICU unit to go over the results of her latest MRI scan. Something about lesions and something else about some blurriness in her right temporal lobe. She largely dismissed the findings as inconsequential. She felt fine!

As far as her amnesia went, she had decided to pretend it was just a game. It was only temporary, after all. Someday she'd wake up, and they'd all have a good laugh about the time that she couldn't remember who anyone was, or what she'd done for the last twenty five years. Until then, she'd ask questions and try to imagine the things she couldn't recall.

Her arm was a different story. After Dr. Haglen left, a different doctor showed up, unwrapped the bandages, and clucked worriedly over it before shuttling her down to the operating room. They needed to get ahead of any infection before it set in and made her sick. Or so they said before they sedated her.

When she woke from having her arm worked on, she found herself in a new room. This one had the look and feel of a typical hospital room, complete with a real door instead of a curtain. Uncle Jesse explained that she wasn't bad off enough for the ICU, so they had transferred her up to the Neurological Wing.

That evening, she convinced Uncle Jesse and her cousins to go home for the night and get some sleep. The three of them were dead on their feet, and she was beginning to feel terribly guilty about them not taking care of themselves. After a promise to get plenty of sleep herself and to call them if anything was wrong, they gratefully stumbled out the door, leaving her alone.

The silence was nice, and she snuggled down into the quilt Luke had brought her from home (an old, faded double-wedding ring she remembered from Uncle Jesse and Aunt Lavinia's bed). Before she knew it, she was asleep.

When she woke, it was morning; the sunlight throwing a long slice of light upon the far wall and down the door. She yawned and stretched her good arm, wishing she could scratch the other one; somewhere deep inside, it itched like crazy. She sighed, thinking she would take another nap before Uncle Jesse and her cousins arrived, and almost closed her eyes again before she noticed that she wasn't alone.

Watching her silently from the chair next to her bed, a skeptical expression on his face, sat a man she hadn't met. Although dressed in dark slacks and a button up dress shirt, he wore a gun in a belt holster and, beside it, a badge with a six-pointed star.

"Oh! Sorry!" she apologized. "I didn't see you sitting there. Are you here about the guys that shot out the tire? Of my Jeep?" Apparently, the Jeep had a name. Dusty? Dottie...no... _Dixie_! Bo had told her what happened, although she didn't remember why she had been chasing the guys who had shot at her. She supposed it didn't matter.

The officer studied her, frowning, and she wondered if maybe he was in the wrong room. Then, his eyes – _hazel ones, but more green than brown_ \- met hers, and he gave her a smile that didn't reach them, like the fake smiles the doctors gave her when they had bad news. "Sure," he agreed. "I reckon you could say that."

"Oh, well, you oughta talk to Rosco about it then," she explained. "He's the sheriff in Hazzard County, and he saw me crash. I don't actually know what happened. That's why I'm in the hospital's Neuro wing, I can't remember anything." She tapped on her head and shrugged her shoulders, apologetically. "But I can tell you what he told me."

The man shook his head. "That's alright, I'll talk to him, later," he said, noncommittally, before narrowing his eyes and switching the subject. "What'd you mean, you can't remember anything?"

"Well...I don't know exactly how to describe it. I mean, I don't feel like anything's wrong with me, other than my arm, but apparently I've forgotten the last twenty-five years or so."

He took a quick breath, as though her admission surprised him. "Permanently?"

She thought it was an odd question, and not really his business. "The doctors say I'm still healing," she snapped, angrily. He raised an eyebrow at her tone. "Anyway, I'm not sure that's relevant to your investigation."

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asked, ignoring her last comment.

She turned her face away from him, feeling her throat tighten with the tears that lay just below the surface anytime she peeked behind the cheery facade of present tense. "My Aunt Lavinia canning tomatoes," she whispered. "Just like it was yesterday." Her eyes closed as she saw the memory once again, then she shook her head to clear it and looked back at the officer. She wished he would leave. "I didn't even remember she was dead."

"That must have been hard to hear."

"Yeah, it was," she frowned, thinking that the conversation had become far too personal, especially without her family around. "Anyway, I'm sorry I can't help you with your report. Was there anything else you needed, officer?"

He stood and picked up the black jacket he had draped over the back of the chair, then smiled sadly at her. This time, it touched his eyes. "No, ma'am," he said, politely. "I'm right sorry to have bothered you. I hope you feel better soon."

The door closed behind him before she could even think to ask his name.

Shortly thereafter, Uncle Jesse, Luke, and Bo came in, each looking considerably better than they had the previous evening. They had already taken up their perches in chairs around her room when she thought to tell them about the visitor.

"Oh! Some guy was here when I woke up, Uncle Jesse." She had almost forgotten. "He left just before you got here. I think he might have been from the State Police or the GBI. He wasn't wearing a uniform, though, so I'm not sure. He seemed more interested in me than the accident," she mused.

Bo and Luke cast anxious glances at each other before getting up from their seats, and Uncle Jesse seemed to have caught whatever nervous condition her cousins were suffering from. He stood up and came over to stand beside her, ignoring her cousins who crowded in around him.

"Uh, Daisy...What did this officer look like?"

She shrugged. "Tall, dark hair, hazel eyes…"

Luke swore softly, and Bo turned the color of soft cheese.

"Why do y'all look so worried?" she asked. "This is a hospital, no one's going to come in and hurt me here, especially not a police officer. He had a gun and a badge and everything."

"Boys," said Uncle Jesse, still staring oddly at her, "Uh... Let's go check and see if he signed in at the registration desk." He herded them towards the door. "We'll be right back, Daisy."

"Oh, okay," she said, unconcerned. "You didn't need to worry about me, though."

Out of earshot down the hall, Bo and Luke began talking at once.

"You boys quieten down," said Jesse. "And asking me what I think isn't gonna get you anywhere until we know for sure." He walked up to the nurse's station for the Neuro wing and leaned heavily on the counter. A young woman looked up and smiled.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"A police officer came to visit my niece while we were out, but she says she didn't know him. Is there a place where he would have signed in?"

"Sure is," she said, shuffling papers around on the desk until she uncovered a clipboard. "You just missed him." She lay the clipboard on the counter, facing him.

At the bottom was the name Jesse Duke feared he would find.

"Uncle Jesse-"

"You two go back and stay with Daisy," he said, cutting off Bo's comment.

"I can't believe, of all people, she didn't know _Enos,_ " said Luke. "Shucks, those two were nearly inseparable when they were kids. What the heck are we 'sposed to tell her?"

"If she asks, tell her we're not sure where the officer was from. That's true enough." Jesse pulled his ratty, red hat from his pocket, straightened the brim, and jammed it on his head. "Then talk about whatever she wants to talk about. Except Enos." He glared at both of them. "If she don't remember him, she doesn't need to know. There ain't no sense in opening that can of worms right now. Hopefully, he'll stop by the farm before he disappears for good this time."

He left them standing in the hallway, hurrying to the elevators as fast as his tired, old legs could carry him. If he didn't catch Enos tonight, he knew none of them would ever see him again.

* * *

At a traffic light on the outskirts of Atlanta, Jim and Betsy Norman pulled their Cadillac DeVille alongside a striking, black Ford Bronco XLT with knobby, oversize tires and a heavy-duty winch, bearing all manner of police strobes and spotlights. Silver stripes fanned out across the side, ending with a large _"SHERIFF"_ decal near the back. On the door was a county seal depicting a lighthouse, a huge ship rocked by stormy waves, and a golden evergreen.

Betsy and her husband were always looking for unusual vacation spots now that they had both retired and the kids were gone. Wherever this guy was from, it looked like just the place to spend an interesting couple of days.

"Say, Jimmy?"

"Hmm?" The light changed and the DeVille and the Bronco parted ways as it turned to head north.

"Where in the world is Whitefish County?"


	6. Half of the Past

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "So faint, the walls behind me now.  
> I know where they stand, I know the way home.  
> And if my scars were tattoos, I could hide them in plain view  
> If these ghosts let me go, I would set fire to them all."  
> -Big Wreck, Ghosts

* * *

The gravel crunched beneath the truck's tires as Enos pulled up in front of the farmhouse. He cut the engine, but hunched forward and rested his arms on the steering wheel instead of getting out. Why he had come here, he couldn't say. No one was home anyway. He calculated the distance between himself and the place he called home, and knew he wouldn't make it back until Thursday evening now, no matter how fast he drove. He wanted his own bed and to be alone. The front of the old tractor peeked out from the open door of the barn, its lights glaring balefully at him as though it could read his thoughts.

With a sigh, he tossed the keys into the cup holder and opened the door. The scent of drying corn hit him, and he swore he could _smell_ the mountains. They had taken away more than a few people he'd loved in his life, and they always seemed to be waiting to draw him back in; keeping him in their sights - their lost child, the son of a Ridgerunner. Now, for all intents and purposes, they had claimed another, and this one he could not forgive. They stood resolutely on the horizon, their peaks shadowy in the midst of low-lying clouds.

He _hated_ them, and as he let out the tears he'd held in since Atlanta, he wished he could hate _her_ , too, but he knew that would never happen. Naively, he had hoped that some part of her had missed him during the two years he'd been away. Now, she couldn't even _remember_ him. The distance in her eyes today...that had cut the deepest - even deeper than her running off to marry 'What's-His-Name' six weeks after she had almost been his.

On nights when the storms beat against the windows of his cabin, and the snows came with a fury he had never believed possible, his memory would travel the long road of their past, back to when they were kids and she had been the other half of his soul. Again, he would wonder what had come between them, and how two people who had once been so close could have drifted so far apart. Now, their memories were his alone, and he might as well have made up all the adventures they had shared together.

He ran up the porch steps before he could change his mind and walked into the empty house.

The kitchen stood untouched by time; the same faded wallpaper; the same cabinets, stove, and fridge; the same table where he had sat, not as a guest but as family. Happy memories of bygone days pressed close around him; of Aunt Lavinia, standing at the stove while he and Daisy ate breakfast (or more likely, snapped beans or peeled potatoes as punishment for some mischief they had perpetrated, usually upon Luke).

She had been like a mother to him...more so than his own. He had been eleven when she passed away, and Daisy nine; old enough to understand death, but too young to realize how their lives would change because of it. There were times he still missed her terribly, even after all these years.

He skirted the table and went into the living room where a line of dog-eared cardboard boxes sat, filled with things he recognized as Daisy's. It seemed unbearable that it could all be stashed away so easily, like Christmas decorations after New Year's. Even the journals she had hidden inside the box spring of her bed were in a box labeled "burn". He stepped over them and pushed open the door to her room. Every nook and cranny had been stripped bare of what had made the space her own.

He turned to leave, but his foot caught the edge of the closest box and upended it, spilling its contents across the rug. He crouched down, setting the box aright and tossing in various knick-knacks and high school mementos - then stopped. In the pile of odds and ends, was a letter addressed to him. It had been mailed and the postage cancelled, but it was unopened and stamped " **UNDELIVERABLE** " in bold, red ink. The cancellation mark bore the date of December 12th, 1985, but by then he had left Los Angeles.

With a sigh, he folded it in half and slipped it into his pocket.

* * *

"Y'all look as anxious as a couple of cats in a room full of rocking chairs," joked Daisy, as Bo and Luke filed back into her room. "Didja figure out who the cop was who came to visit me?"

"Well, you know, Daisy," Bo said, giving her a winning smile and nervously ruffling his hair, "we ain't sure where he came from. If he comes by again, tell him to wait around until we get back."

She shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you two were worried about a police officer coming to see me. Y'all ain't running shine no more, right?"

"Nope, we sure ain't. Not for a long time." He looked over at Luke. "Ain't that right, cuz?"

Luke, who had what Daisy thought was a mighty sour look on his face, was staring out the window, lost in his own thoughts. Bo elbowed him, and his jerked his attention back to the two of them. "Uh...Yep, that's right, Bo."

Daisy frowned betwixt the two of them. If she knew them better, which she didn't, she'd think they were trying to hide something from her. Her speculation was cut short by a woman in a smart business suit who knocked politely on the door before she came in.

"Hi, Daisy? I'm Maria Lospelt, I'm one of the clinical sociologists here at Grady," she said, by way of introduction. Her attention turned to the two men in the room. "I see you have some visitors here with you today!"

"Yep, I sure do," she answered. "These here are my cousins, Bo and Luke Duke."

"Howdy, ma'am," said Bo, stretching out his hand to shake hers. "It's nice to meet ya'." Daisy wondered why he was looking all googly-eyed at the lady. She had to be at least forty.

Luke stepped up next to his cousin. "Likewise, ma'am," he said, shaking her hand in turn.

The woman turned back to Daisy. "How would you feel about getting out of this room for a while?" she asked, with a bright smile.

Daisy had been feeling so stir crazy since she'd woken up in the ICU, she didn't even care where she was going. "Does that mean I can get outta this bed?" she asked, her voice colored with hope. "The doctors trussed me up in this contraption for my arm and won't even let me walk around, even though I told them there ain't nothing wrong with my legs."

The woman grinned at her enthusiasm. "Well, what we'll be doing today might help take your mind off of your arm for a little while," she said. "We're going to be doing some testing on your memory. I just talked with the doctor, and he's approved you being in a wheelchair today, so I'll get a couple of nurses to help with your arm, and we'll get you moving again. How's that sound?"

"Really!?" The thought of not being confined to a bed was like finding extra presents on Christmas morning. She'd never been one to lay around all day. "Thanks, Ms...I'm sorry, what did you say your name was, again?"

"Lospelt," the woman repeated, "and you can call me Maria or Ms. Lospelt, whichever you feel more comfortable with."

"Getting out of this room sounds great, Ms. Lospelt." It felt wrong to be calling someone so old by her first name.

* * *

Enos was sitting at the kitchen table woolgathering when a vehicle pulled up to the house, and he groaned to himself when he heard Uncle Jesse's footsteps on the porch before the door opened. Bo and Luke would have be easier to get away from, although Bo wouldn't understand why he couldn't stay, and Luke...well, he and Luke never had much in common besides being the same age. And racing.

But Uncle Jesse _would_ understand, and he'd never neglected to have a heart-to-heart with someone he thought needed one. He closed his eyes and massaged his temples where a headache was already settling in, thinking he could have been halfway to Knoxville by now.

The chair next to him scraped the floor and Uncle Jesse dropped into it with a sigh.

"You're a hard man to track down, Enos." He paused, then continued when he didn't get an answer. "I'm wagerin' you thought twice about coming, but I'm glad you did."

There was no point in playing the clueless deputy anymore; Uncle Jesse could see through him like a cellophane bag. "You knew I would."

Jesse nodded in agreement. "That's a mighty fancy ride you've got out there," he noted, gesturing towards the door.

Enos couldn't help but grin at that. "The State of Michigan was buying."

The truck hadn't been his idea, it had been the _former_ sheriff's idea, although the whole township had insisted that their little slice of heaven deserved whatever it could wring out of the state, what with waiting fifty years to finally have their county status approved. The locals were having a good laugh at the State's consternation over their courthouse plans, as well. They still had the original blueprints from 1925, and that's what they wanted (with a couple of modern conveniences, of course). Quarried redstone and all.

"I can't stay," he continued. "The former sheriff's filling in for me, and if he misses opening day of deer season, he ain't gonna be happy." Doc Fletcher was a soft hearted, jovial guy, but everyone took hunting seriously up there. Opening day was an unofficial state holiday, the kids even got out of school.

"When's that?"

Enos hesitated. "November 13th, but we're supposed to get snow this weekend," he added. "If I stay, I'm libel to be driving in it. It'll already be Thursday evening before I get back."

Technically, wasn't as big a deal as it sounded. It _was_ supposed to snow Friday night and into Saturday, but only an inch or so. Compared with what he'd experienced over the last two years, that was akin to running through a sprinkler in the summer. In the deep south, it was as good as excuse as any. Even flurries were met with trepidation here. He snuck a glance at his watch as Uncle Jesse got up and opened the fridge.

"You want a ham sandwich, Enos?" he offered. "I've just about had all the hospital fare I can say grace over."

"I wouldn't turn one down, thanks Uncle Jesse." He couldn't remember having pork outside of bacon or a pasty since he lived in Hazzard. A moment later, a plate with sliced ham on white was in front of him, along with a glass of buttermilk.

Uncle Jesse sat back down in his seat with a sandwich of his own, and they ate in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. Halfway through the second half, the older man took a swig of his iced tea, wiped his hands, and said, "We figured it was you who went to see Daisy this morning."

Enos pushed his plate away, suddenly out of an appetite. "She thought I was there about the accident," he said. "Told me to go talk to Rosco since she couldn't remember what happened, then asked me to leave, in not so many words." His next question stuck in his throat, as though if not spoken, it could never be true. "Is it permanent?" he asked, quietly, remembering how evasive she'd been about it at the hospital. "She said the doctors didn't know."

Jesse sighed and shook his head. "Her last MRI scan showed more damage than they originally thought," he answered. "Not a lot, but I guess it don't take a lot to scramble things. Dr. Haglen, the neurologist, called it 'focal retrograde amnesia'. Gave us a pamphlet that didn't explain much, but he said it ain't very common. Everything else seems to be there - facts, figures...she can make new memories. He thinks she'll probably still be able to drive when she's ready to try, but anything personal that's not there now - episode memory, he called it, he doesn't expect will come back. Said it's hard to know whether her brain just can't find them, or if they were destroyed, but either way..." He gestured impotently.

"Either way, they're gone."

"The doctor tried to explain it to her, but she's convinced herself it's only temporary."

"Still stubborn."

"She's still _Daisy_ , Enos," he said. "You talk to her for five minutes and you can tell she's still herself. More naive in some ways, it seems; 'course, she remembers being ten like it was just yesterday. Life throws a lot of trash at us in between ten and thirty-two." He studied the ex-deputy. "But, there's gonna come a time when she can't run away from it, anymore. She needs someone here who understands her, especially how she was when she was younger. She needs _you_."

He laughed at that. "She needs me even less now than she did before, Uncle Jesse." he said, cynically. "At least then she knew who I was." He crossed his arms and glared darkly at the red checked tablecloth, until he felt Uncle Jesse staring at him, and he began to fidget.

"You don't wear bitterness well, son," he told him, gently. "She never meant to hurt you like she did."

His words stole the remaining anger away, leaving only an abysmal sadness. "I know she didn't," he sighed, marveling, not for the first time in his life, how the man could cut through all the clutter to get right at the heart of the matter. "And I'm not angry, not really...not anymore." He looked up, into the man's careworn face. "I'll always love her, Uncle Jesse, but I can't stay. I can't make more memories with her. It hurts too much." He stood up, sliding the chair back underneath the table. "I wish I could stick around to see Bo and Luke, but I really do have to get going," he apologized. "I wasn't planning on stopping as it were, but I thought I might run into someone here since you weren't at the hospital."

"You left right before we got there."

"Thanks for tracking me down, Uncle Jesse," he said. "I don't know when I'll be back around."

"Or _if_ , you mean to say."

Their eyes met, but Enos dropped his first. "Don't tell her about me. Not unless she remembers on her own." He turned to leave, but as his fingers closed around the doorknob, Uncle Jesse's hand fell on his shoulder, stopping him. He looked back up, surprised to see tears in his eyes.

"I know you're too old for me to lecture, Enos," he said, "and, I understand why you felt you had to leave. But you should know...if you ever need one, you'll always have a home here, and you can always come back."

Enos nodded, his throat too tight with tears to speak, and gave the man a hug.

"You be safe out there," Uncle Jesse whispered. "We love ya'."

"I love you, too, Uncle Jesse."

* * *

The silence in the room was stilted and unpleasant as the three cousins waited for Ms. Lospelt to come back with the nurses. Daisy tried again to remember before the accident, to picture Luke or Bo, as they looked now, doing everyday chores at the farm. It was no use. The memories her mind brought up of Bo were of a cherub-faced, three year old, toddling around the back forty and putting dirt in his mouth. Luke, well...she sighed to herself. She was trying her best to give Luke the benefit of the doubt, but his moodiness this morning was as she remembered him. It seemed he was always grouchy at _somebody_.

At last, the sociologist lady swept back into the room along with two nurses. Together, they managed to transfer Daisy into a wheelchair without too much pain or embarrassment.

Who knew hospital gowns didn't have backs!?

A platform had been built into the side to which they fastened the arm halo to hold it in place, and Ms. Lospelt draped the quilt from home over her legs. Even though she had been in an upright position in the bed for most of the previous day, she felt weak and unbalanced. Sitting in a seat and at a proper angle, she had a better grasp of her own height and weight, and was once again faced with the dichotomy of her memory vs. her feelings. Her body _felt_ right, but she didn't remember getting to the size she was.

"Ready?" Ms. Lospelt asked.

"I think so."

"We'll go slow," she said. "After you've been in bed for a few days, it can take a while for moving to feel normal again."

Then they were off, out the door and down the hall. For Daisy, it felt like a bird being let out of a cage. She could feel the air, like wind, moving past her face as the wheelchair rolled smoothly over the polished tiles, and she found herself wanting to laugh at the way simply being mobile again felt so wonderful.

At the end of the hall, they turned left, and then into a room which reminded her of the classroom of her first grade teacher, Mrs. Lee. There were four round tables with puzzles and crayons at each one. At one end of the room, there was a cozy seating area with beanbags and a couch with a large dollhouse. Along the back wall, in cubbies, there were boxes labeled things like "notecards", "blocks", and "paper", and others with funny names such as "Rorschach" and "Wechsler".

Ms. Lospelt wheeled her up to one of the tables and set the brake. "Today, we're going to start small and work on some of the shorter tests that don't take as long," she explained. "As you get your strength back over the next few days, we'll switch to some of the more complex tests."

She lay a sheet of paper and a pencil down on the table in front of Daisy, then took out a set of flip-cards from one of the cubbies. From the cards, she selected one which she stood up beside the paper.

It wasn't really a picture at all, Daisy decided as she studied it, just some rectangles and other shapes stuck together with a smiley face in one part. She thought it looked a little like a spaceship, but that was a stretch.

"In the first part of this test," said Ms. Lospelt, "I'd like you to draw as much of this figure for me as you can, while looking at it."

Daisy picked up the pencil. Holding it felt familiar, and she thought of the pencil sharpener in the school library and the smell of graphite shavings. "I'm not sure how good I am at drawing," she said, "but I can try."

"Just do the best you can," she encouraged. "That's all that matters with any of these tests."

It took about five minutes for her to draw all the lines and boxes and triangles, plus one smiley face. When she was finished the woman put it aside, face down on a different table.

"We're going to come back to that test, but first, I have some questions I'd like to ask you." She opened a folder, and Daisy tried to steal a peek at the list of questions, but it was hard to decipher upside down. "Some of these questions you'll probably think are very easy," she was saying, "and others you might have trouble answering. Every answer is okay, even if it's _'I don't know'_."

For the next ten or fifteen minutes, Daisy answered questions much like Dr. Haglen had asked her after she'd just woken up; questions such as her name, address, and phone number; but different ones, too, such as ' _How did you get to this hospital?'_ , ' _What day of the week is it?'_ , and ' _What is the last thing you can recall before your accident?'_. By the time the questions were finished, she felt like she had run a marathon.

"You've done great today, Daisy," the woman said, finally, "and I know you're getting tired. I just have one last thing for you to do, and it's the second part of the drawing test you worked on." She placed a blank sheet of paper down on the table with the pencil. "I would like you to draw as much of the picture from earlier as you can remember, but this time without looking at it."

"Oh...wow, okay. I'll try." She thought about the picture in her head, how it looked like a spaceship. That would be a good start, she decided, with the main rectangle for the body of the ship.

After she was finished, Ms. Lospelt let her compare her memory spaceship to the picture. All in all, it wasn't too bad. She'd forgotten a couple of lines here and there, and the quirky little propeller thing on the end.

"Did I do okay?" she worried. "I forgot a couple of parts."

"You did great, actually," she told her. "What this test does is check your short-term memory. People who have anterograde amnesia, or problems forming new memories, usually won't be able to reproduce much, if any, of the figure. It's completely normal to miss a couple of parts after fifteen to twenty minutes." She stapled Daisy's first and second drawings together beneath a form with her information on it and stuck it in the folder. "We'll do some more testing tomorrow, but for now, you look like you could use a nap."

Daisy yawned and laughed. "I didn't realize drawing could be so exhausting!"

Ms. Lospelt tucked the quilt back around her legs. "You'll start to feel stronger everyday, especially if you're up and about in the wheelchair," she assured her. "It won't be long before they'll have you walking around all over the place."

"I hope so," she said, sleepily. "I just want to go home."

* * *

It was after 8:00pm by the time Enos pulled into the parking lot of the Holiday Inn in Dayton, Ohio. Even though he would have been just as comfortable in a less expensive motel, he knew from experience that it was better to pay the extra money than to leave a police cruiser in an unguarded parking lot overnight. He blushed, remembering the stuff which had been spray painted on his car while working on a VICE sting on the outskirts of Los Angeles. After parking at a seedy motel a block over, he'd had to tell the guy from impound to bring a can of paint with him the next morning before they could even tow it through the city. It had been an eye opening lesson, to say the least.

He checked in and asked for a room on the ground floor, then moved the Bronco around to park next to his window, just in case. No sense in taking chances, and he wasn't in the mood to deal with vandalism tonight. Besides, Uncle Jesse was right. The truck _was_ pretty swanky, and he liked it.

After a shower, he dressed in a pair of old, ratty sweats from the LAPD and collapsed onto the bed. He was almost asleep when he remembered the letter from Daisy he had stashed in his pocket. With a groan, he rolled off the bed and went through the pockets of his slacks and pulled it out. For a long time, he simply looked at it, flipping it over in his hands, not ready to face whatever might be inside.

The cancellation date of December 12th had been after L.D. had left her; that much he knew, but only because he'd called Rosco to ask for a reference in mid-October.

Four months.

That was how long it had taken the roadie to decide that Hazzard, and Daisy Duke, weren't what he wanted. He'd up and left one night while she was working late at the Boars' Nest; Rosco said he hadn't even told her good-bye.

Enos had at least managed that...

He blew out a deep breath and tore off the end of the envelope. There wasn't much to the letter, just a half a sheet from a spiral-bound notebook. With a heavy heart and an aching soul, he began to read.

* * *

_A/N: The tests which Maria Lospelt gives Daisy are the Rey–Osterrieth Complex Figure Test and the Galveston Orientation and Amnesia Test (GOAT). (Hey look! I'm finally using my psychology degree for something other than making up crazy dudes like Darcy Kincaid! YAY!)_

_"Redstone", if you're interested, is Jacobsville Sandstone, but when we lived up in Wisconsin, everyone just called it 'redstone'. A lot of the older buildings from the turn of the century were made from it up there.  
_

_Oh...and a "pasty" is like the national food of Northwoods Wisconsin and Michigan. It's pronounced like saying the word "past", then sticking a long e sound on the end. It's diced potatoes, rutabaga, and usually beef in a bread-like pastry. Unfortunately for me, rutabagas taste like turnips and I hate cooked turnips. :(_


	7. To One Forgotten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When the snow comes  
> on a dark and sunless day  
> and drifts are deep  
> and time is slow  
> You find me then  
> across the miles, uncharted  
> and sing to me,  
> the one forgotten.  
> -the author

* * *

Outside his hotel window, the sounds of traffic continued in a slow loop of monotony; the squealing brakes and low rumbling of bus engines, interspersed with brief interludes of rap music over blown speakers. All passed by without his notice as the city fell deeper into night. He'd taken the letter out fifteen minutes before but had only gotten past his name and the first sentence before his tired mind had started to wander.

It was well past ten, according to the clock beside the lamp, and he was faced with one of two choices; read it now and not sleep well, then drive the last eight hours trying not to nod off at the wheel, or read it when he got home and drive himself to distraction about it the entire way. Deciding the second choice would at least be the safer option, he slipped the letter back into its envelope and stowed it in the side pocket of his duffel bag.

He turned off the lamp, got into bed and then proceeded to stare up at the semi-dark ceiling for the next forty-five minutes, wondering what the letter said.

"Oh good grief," he muttered, disgusted at himself. "Just read the ding-dang thing, already." He turned on the light and grabbed it from his bag, ripping the letter back out of its envelope.

_Dear Enos,_

_Here I am writing you a letter at three in the morning. It's been a long night. To be honest (and it's about time for that, isn't it?) it's been a long year. Of all the things I wish I had never done, hurting you is the one I'll never forgive myself for. I wish I could turn back the clock and never meet L.D. but I wish the bank had never gotten robbed either. Then everything could just go back to how it was before. I've had to face a lot of hard truths lately and it's not just because you were right about him. You were so right. You told me it wouldn't last and that he'd hurt me, but I thought you were just jealous. I'm so sorry I didn't listen._

_Part of me wanted to come with you when you asked. But it wouldn't have been fair to you because I can't give you what you want. I can't marry you, not because I don't love you but because I'm not the girl you love"_

"You're wrong," he murmured.

_I know you'll say I'm wrong, but you're in love with a part of me that I can't find anymore. We were a crazy beautiful mess once before we grew up and the world came between us. You think I don't remember but I do.  
_

_You deserve to be happy and be with someone who loves you the way I can't. There's someone out there waiting for you and when you find her, I hope she's as beautiful on the outside as you are on the inside and that someday you can forgive me. Love, D-_

"Trying my best, Daisy," he sighed, as he wadded the letter up into a ball and chucked it at the trash can. He missed.

He already knew her side of their story; she'd tried to tell him all that garbage, perhaps not so eloquently, that morning at the bus stop. Why she thought it needed to be said again, and in a letter at 3:00am, he didn't know. He _did_ know that she had almost come with him. He'd asked her on a whim, had told her he'd follow her wherever she wanted to go, just name it. She hesitated, then shook her head and told him that it was too late, and that they weren't little kids anymore, running off on some crazy adventure. For an instant though, he had seen a wistful longing in her eyes, or so he'd thought.

He even believed she loved him, no matter what she said. After all you didn't -

_Oh please...don't think about that, not tonight..._

-kiss someone like _that_ if you didn't feel _something_ for them.

She'd followed him up to the platform as the bus crawled slowly around the corner to the station, even though there was nothing more to say between them. He'd turned and she was there, the morning sun drenching her in gold - so close, and yet so far away. Kissing her good-bye had made sense at the time, though the reasoning for such an action escaped him now. Stolen or not, it was meant to be chaste. After all, she was engaged to be married to another man.

Then her fingers were in his hair, pulling him closer, and he lost himself in her as she deepened their kiss, painfully aware it was all he would ever be given. It might have lasted minutes, or only a handful of seconds, he didn't know. The bus honked, and she'd let him go and fled.

It was that kiss that haunted him in the cold and lonely nights, reminding him of everything he could never have. And what had it mattered whether she loved him or not? She'd married L.D. anyway.

The bus had taken him to Atlanta, and from there he'd flown to Los Angeles. He'd knocked on Turk's door, the only place he knew to go, and slept for nearly eighteen hours before dragging his sorry hide off of the folding cot in the spare room. The next day, he'd gone down to the LAPD Headquarters at the Parker Center and asked for his old job back...sort of.

Instead of reapplying with the Metropolitan Division, he'd asked to be assigned to the Central Division. That alone was enough to get him a new Psych-evaluation, because no one _asked_ for Central. Covering over 54 blocks of 'no-go zone', their beat encompassed some of the roughest areas of the city, including Skid Row, Inglewood, and Compton. Nine officers had been killed in the line of duty over the last eighteen months out of Central. They were always short-handed, and he knew no matter what Psych said about him, if he was breathing and walking, he'd get the job.

He did.

Maybe some of them understood; he neither knew nor cared. Cops at "Fort Davis", as they called the windowless, concrete bunker in the midst of the inner city, didn't make friends easily. It was hard when the guy across from you might be in the next casket you carried. He kept to himself, did his job, and almost succeeded in putting himself out of his misery.

Two weeks before it happened, Turk had shown up at his apartment on a moonless August night, with a jug of buttermilk and a couple of beers for himself. After catching up on odds and ends, Turk asked him point blank why he was trying to kill himself.

He'd played the clueless act on him, which had ended up in one of the few real fights the two of them had ever had. He had vehemently denied being suicidal, while Turk had informed him that volunteering for Central Division was the same damn thing. They'd yelled at each other's obstinance for awhile, and then settled down to stew, drinking their respective poisons until Turk had broken the silence.

"Look Enos, call me selfish. I'm not here to tell you your business," he said. "but you're the best damn friend I've ever had, and I don't want to lose you. Not like that." He stared at the liquid in his amber bottle and swirled it around. "I've see cops walk in front of bullets before. Whether or not that's what you're thinking of doing, if you're in Central one's gonna find you, probably sooner than later."

"It takes my mind off of everything else." He never explained what was bothering him, but he suspected the man knew him well enough to read between the lines.

Turk dug into the front pocket of his jeans and took out a scrap of paper. "Maybe what you need is to get away from Georgia _and_ California. Give yourself a chance to heal," he said, handing him the paper. "I thought about you when I saw this. Clipped it out of the August issue of Police Magazine."

He'd studied it with disinterest. Apparently, the newly formed county of Whitefish in Upper Michigan was looking for an interim deputy to take over as sheriff the following spring. "I probably couldn't even find Michigan on a map if you gave me three tries," he said. "Where the heck is the 'Upper Peninsula'?"

"Don't be an idiot, Strate."

"Look, I'll be fine," he'd assured him, tossing the ad onto the lamp stand. "but I appreciate you tryin' to help. I'll be careful."

He fell asleep thinking of that day, and in the night the dream came again. This time, it was _his_ face and not his partner in front of the .357 Magnum. The click sent him hurtling up from sleep, afraid he had screamed aloud. Breathless in the dark, he waited, drenched in sweat with heart pounding, listening for footsteps in the hall. On the bedside table, his service pistol glinted dully, safely within arms reach. He dropped back onto the pillow and slept again, deeper and without dreaming.

* * *

Daisy eyed the new doctor with some suspicion, never having seen him before. They had woken her up bright and early this morning, asking how she felt about getting that 'jungle-gym' off her arm. She had felt just fine about that! Only they neglected to tell her that it meant the orthopedic surgeon was ready to place the permanent plates into the bones, not because her arm was finished healing.

"Hi Daisy. I'm Doctor Leland," he said, cheerily, mimicking the same introduction that most of her doctors used. She supposed that's what they taught them to say in school. "I'm going to be doing the surgery on your arm today. How are you feeling? Any pain?"

As a matter of fact, on Monday they must have stopped giving her whatever it was that made it numb. It had hurt like crazy, every screw and rod seemed to be attached to a small pool of liquid fire somewhere inside her bones, beneath the bandages.

"It actually hurts a lot." She tapped at an area between two of the rods just down from her elbow. "Right here."

He nodded. "That's normal," he assured her. "But once we put the plates in, you should heal a lot quicker. It's the soft tissue damage that's causing the pain you're feeling. Your bone pierced part of your muscle, but we'll get you all fixed up, good as new." He smiled the smile of someone who loved his job. "Do you have any questions for me?"

"When can I go home?" It was the question she asked every day, but all they would tell her was that they needed to wait on her arm to heal more.

"If everything goes well, you'll have a regular cast, and I think they have orders to discharge you tomorrow," he said. "That sound okay?"

Daisy grinned at him. "You just became my favorite doctor."


	8. Finding Home

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "A house is built with bricks and beams,  
> but home is made with love and dreams."  
> -Unknown

**October 28th, 1987**

Interstate 75 stretched north through Flint and Saginaw and onward to Grayling and Indian River. The cities dwindled into small, unincorporated burgs consisting of a dozen houses huddled around an intersection with a four-way stop or flashing yellow. Traffic was spotty, distractions few, and by the time Enos reached Mackinaw City, the last stop below the bridge, the coffee wasn't working anymore. Flipping on the radio, he punched through the radio stations.

Polka...Polka...Static...National Weather Service (here he stopped briefly to hear the weather report of 1-2" of light snow)...Polka...Commercial...Rerun of the 'Ice Bowl'...Deer Report. With a groan, he flipped it off.

At last, the first tower of the Mackinaw Suspension Bridge rose in front of him. The sun glittered brilliant off the waves, seagulls swooped and glided beyond the reef, looking for fish caught amongst the rocks, and the weight of his troubles slipped from his shoulders as he left downstate Michigan behind.

North of St. Ignace, the first flakes of snow began to fall. They were light, no more than a dusting - not even snow according to most of the locals. They remained that way over the next hour, until he crossed over the southern edge of Whitefish County near the ghost town of Emerson at the mouth of the Tahquamenon River. Here, the snow grew heavier; large, wet clusters that smashed against the Bronco's windshield.

The ground was white by the time he pulled into his spot at the sheriff's station and the sky a dark, nickel gray with the promise of more. He climbed out of the truck and waited for the pins and needles to leave his legs before he let go of the door handle, then walked around to the front entrance, kicking the snow off against the door frame before he went in.

The dispatch desk was empty, but Doc Fletcher lounged behind the dented, metal desk that served as the booking station and unofficial depository of unfiled paperwork.

"Holy Wah!" he beamed. "Wouldja look at what the cat dragged in? Enos, you look like you're about to fall down. Didn't sleep good, downstate, didja boy? You've got Yooper in your blood, now, eh!"

Adjusting to life in the U.P. had amounted to biggest challenge of Enos' life, but after two years, he was getting used to it. Yoopers, as people in the U.P. called themselves, had turned out to be diamonds in the rough with hearts of gold. The citizens of Tamarack had welcomed him in with open arms, even though he was a "troll" from "below the bridge".

"Hey Doc!" Enos dumped himself into the chair next to the desk. "They keep you busy while I was gone? Thanks again for covering for me."

Doc waived his thanks aside. "The wife was happy to have me outta her hair for a couple of days, doncha know. I expect she's got a honey-do list waiting on me for tomorrow. Not much happened to speak about, otherwise. Oh, before I forget, Charlie Knutson wanted to know if you've got any walleye left in your freezer, says he'll do a bag of pheasant jerky for it."

"Sounds good, I'll hunt him down after I've slept awhile."

"And Melinda brought over a hot dish." Doc continued. "It's in the oven. Go eat it, or I'll have to take it home."

Enos ignored the gleam in the man's eyes. "I'll take it home and eat it later," he told him. "How much snow are we supposed to get?"

"Not enough," he replied, disheartened, "but it's early, yet. Next Wednesday they're saying we might get a foot, though. Tom said if its cold enough for snowing powder, we might be able to get the trails groomed. Make some early money off the trolls."

Enos laughed and shook his head. He still wasn't used to the idea of snow being a good thing, but snowmobile trails and cross-country skiing were vital to the Northwoods' economy. "I'm gonna go home and go to bed, but I'll be here in the morning."

Doc stood and rubbed the back of his neck, a tell which Enos had come to recognize meant trouble. "Yah, about that. The Weather Service issued a squall warning for late morning tomorrow," he said, now serious. "Don't know how bad, yet. Just a small craft advisory for now."

Their eyes met. "I'll be here _early_ in the morning," he amended.

Whitefish Point at the tip of the county was known as the 'Graveyard of the Great Lakes', for good reason. Storms on the lake could capsize even the largest of freighters, and their lighthouse stood as the lone sentinel over the narrow channel leading to safety in the bay and the Soo Locks to the south.

In Tamarack, the lives stolen by Superior were never far from anyone's mind. It was a story told once and then left unspoken - but the ghosts were visceral and real here, and they walked the streets amongst the living.

* * *

On the day Daisy climbed into the pickup Uncle Jesse had brought to take her back to Hazzard, the sky was as beautiful a blue as any she had known. She watched from the window as the miles sped by, daydreaming of home. Familiar things were bound to jog her memory, and she'd had quite enough of feeling like a fish out of water. Would it come back all at once, she wondered, in a bright flash of technicolor memories or would it be a gradual remembering, like seeing an old friend again?

Soon they entered a grimy, little town of dilapidated buildings, busted windows, and junked cars, and she sat up straighter at the sign which read 'Capital City'.

This was where Rosco had first taken her to the hospital after the accident, and she remembered Uncle Jesse having gone there once to pick up a part to fix the tractor. Surely it meant they were getting close! They drove higher into the foothills; the angled layers of rock rising up where the road had been cut. It was warm for late October, the musty smell of drying corn hanging thick in the air.

Thinking about corn made her heartsick. This year, there would be no excitement over the corn harvest in the Duke home, no late nights with Aunt Lavinia reading by the living room lamp, sitting up and waiting for Uncle Jesse. All of that was gone, and it left an emptiness which she didn't know how to fill. How did a Duke live life without running moonshine?

She rested her head against the window and closed her eyes, pondering on it and counting the bumps in the dirt road. It wasn't until they slowed that she looked up to find they had turned down a familiar rock driveway, and there, at the end, was her home.

The tears took her by surprise, but she couldn't help the flood of emotions that swept over her.

Uncle Jesse reached over and patted her hand, and she rolled her eyes at him. "Sorry, Uncle Jesse. I'm not meaning to get weepy."

"You've come through a lot the last week, Daisy," he reminded her. "Sometimes it just needs to leak out."

The house wasn't fancy - it never had been. The root cellar was always flooded and the roof leaked in one spot of the living room, but most of the time it was cozy and she had never gone hungry. One good year, Uncle Jesse had replaced the window in her bedroom with double paned glass he had bought off Arthur Sills. It had stopped the wind so well, she hadn't needed a quilt nailed over it in the winter.

They parked in front, next to an orange car with a flag on top. There was a porch now, a nice sturdy one with actual stairs instead of the rocks she remembered, and the house seemed whiter and fresher. The barn stood in stark contrast, its paint faded and peeling.

Her hand was sweaty on the door latch as she climbed out, taking care not to knock her cast. The door of the kitchen whacked the side of the house as her cousins spilled happily out of the house and into the yard.

Bo was the first to reach her and enveloped her in a bear hug. "I'm guessing you've had enough of all that hospital food. Me and Luke made Uncle Jesse's crawdad bisque, special just for you."

"It's good to have you home, Daisy," said Luke. "Hope you're hungry." He gave her back an awkward pat, knowing she still hadn't quite warmed up to him.

She gave them the smile that they expected. "Sounds great, fellas!" she said, but fear and anticipation warred with each other as she followed them back up the porch and into the kitchen.

Swallowing against the dryness in her throat, she stood in front of the old table, her hands gripping the back of a chair, and waited for some epiphany.

None came.

Nothing - and yet _everything_ \- had changed. The kitchen still stood as she remembered, and yet the feeling was... _wrong_. Something was missing, and she understood that it was the feeling of life her aunt had brought to the space. Without her, it was just a room with a table and chairs. The loss was so profound that it made her sick at her stomach.

A warm hand reached out to steady her. "You feeling okay, Daisy?" asked Luke. His blue eyes searched her face, and in that moment, they reminded her of Uncle Jesse's.

She nodded, quickly. "I'm fine, Luke, just tired, is all. I think I'll go lay down till supper's ready." Brushing past him, she ran to her bedroom and shut the door behind her.

Leaning back against the wall, she looked at the space in front of her. This room was wrong, as well. Sterile and clean, it had been stripped of everything she remembered. Her trophies for the spelling bee and Honor Roll from 1st grade, which sat on her dresser were missing, along with the myriad of papers and knick-knacks which had so recently littered every surface. Aunt Lavinia was always taking her to task for the sorry state of the space. Now it was all gone, and she felt like a stranger. Only the furniture and bedspread were the same. She lay down on the bed, and stared up at the ceiling until Uncle Jesse called her for supper.

The crawdad bisque cheered her up more than she thought it would, and she found herself relaxing to the sound of Bo and Luke grumbling at each other over some girl they had met at the Boar's Nest the week before. If she didn't think too hard about it, she could pretend that empty seat was because her aunt was visiting her sister down in Covington and not because-

She opened her mouth and said the first thing that came to mind. "Say fellas, Doctor Haglen said it was good to visit places that I've been a lot, even if I don't remember them."

"Sounds like a plan," said Bo, agreeably. "You got somewhere you wanna go?"

"Well, there's one place I remember going a lot." She hesitated. With all the other changes, she didn't know if she could deal with anymore. "They haven't drained Hazzard Pond, have they?"

Luke grinned at her. "It's right where it's always been," he said. "There's still plenty of light out, yet, and me and Bo don't mind taking you. Do we?" He looked over at Bo who was all smiles.

Bo slapped his knee. "Shoot no, Daisy! We don't mind at all."

"Well," Uncle Jesse studied the three of them. "I reckon that'd be fine. I'll take care of the dishes. Daisy, you mind your cast, though, and don't go doing too much, just yet."

"I'll just sit up on the dock, Uncle Jesse," she assured him. "No swimming, scout's honor."

Uncle Jesse gave her a funny look before he picked up her plate and took it to the sink.

"Just let me get the rods and tackle box out of the closet, Daisy," said Luke, as she headed towards the door, "and I'll be right behind you and Bo."

Assuming the orange car was the General Lee which Bo had droned on and on about to her in the hospital, she walked over to the passenger side door to open it. It was stuck.

"It's a race car, silly," laughed Bo, coming up beside her. "We welded the doors shut."

"Whose dumb idea was that?"

"I don't rightly remember," he admitted, "but if you think it's dumb, it was Luke. Here, I'll help you in."

She gasped as he picked her up without warning and stuck her feet into the open window. After several hard knocks and bumps that she knew would hurt later, she finally made it into the car. Bo ran around and climbed through the driver's side just as Luke came out out of the house with the fishing gear.

"I don't remember us ever driving to the pond," she griped, as Luke dropped down into the passenger seat, sandwiching her between himself and Bo. "It's right down the road. We could've just walked."

"Two miles gets a lot longer after you turn thirty," said Luke. "Sides, if we catch some fish, I don't want to wait to get home and clean them. You're the one who always liked to walk, not me."

She mulled over his words until they pulled over on the gravel road beside the pond. Luke grabbed the fishing rods as Bo helped her out. Getting out of the General Lee turned out to be even worse than getting in. On the rocky bank, she knelt down and scooped up a handful of pebbles before catching up to her cousins. She handed half of the pebbles to Luke who stared at them.

"What're these?"

"Rocks."

"Well, I can see that," he said, still holding his hand out. "What for?"

"To throw in the water, of course." She had no idea why he was so confused. They always tossed rocks into the pond, didn't they? Bo would have been too young, so that left only Luke. You aimed at where the first person threw one and tried to get yours in the same place. "It's a game we used to play."

"Oh...well, okay. Thanks." To her dismay, he put the rocks into his pocket, then gathered up his fishing tackle and followed Bo.

"Games take _two_ people," she muttered at his back, but he was too far away to hear.

The water was deep blue and little, white-capped waves rolled across from the opposite side, stirred by the breeze. The familiar creaks and groans of the boards on the dock made her heart sing with happiness, and she sat down on the end, swinging her legs over the side.

How many times had she sat here - right here on this very spot? Countless times that she could remember, and doubtless a hundred more that she could not.

The afternoon sun warmed her bones as she tossed a rock into the water and watched as the rings floated out from it, then threw in another, further, and another until they were all gone. She wiped her hand off on her jeans and sighed, wishing one of her cousins had stayed to keep her company. The fishing was better at the deeper end of the pond, though, and she watched as Bo reeled his line in and tossed it back out.

She never remembered feeling so lonely.

* * *

_A/N: The 'Ice Bowl' was the December 31, 1976 NFL Championship game played at Lambeau Field between the Packers and Cowboys. The actual game temperature was -15 degrees, but the wind chill was **-48 below zero.** I swear to you that, at any given time, it's playing somewhere on the radio up there._

_Tamarack is fictional, but in my head it looks a lot like Bayfield, Wisconsin._

_I try not to put too much vernacular into dialogue because it tends to make it difficult to read. However, you may see some northern phraseology in this story. Namely, the expression "eh" is often added to the end of sentences. It has a lot of meanings, usually something like "isn't that right?" It's pronounced like a long "A" sound. Also, "the" is often changed to "da". Like, "Da Bears are a terrible football team, doncha know?"_


	9. Bits and Pieces

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "...It is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string  
> situated in the corresponding quarter of your frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles  
> or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a  
> nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly." - Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

* * *

_**Saturday, December 5, 1987** _

The sounds of the night echoed through the valley as Daisy sat on the porch, huddled in an old quilt. Why she was there, she couldn't say. Only that she had a feeling that she _should_ be, and over the last six weeks her intuition had proved more reliable than her memory.

The psychologist she saw for follow up testing and "life counseling" down in Atlanta explained to her that feelings tied to her lost memories were stored in parts in her brain which had not been injured. While triggering these emotions couldn't bring back recall of the actual event, she could use them to teach herself more about the things she couldn't remember.

 _Trust them,_ he had said _. If you feel like something is important, listen to what your mind is trying to tell you._

Usually, she had no concept of her missing time; she felt like a child who had mysteriously woken up in a world twenty-five years later, like something out of a science fiction novel. It was in those rare moments of emotional memory that she actually felt the loss. Deja vu was how she explained it to Uncle Jesse and her cousins, but it was more than that. It was deep and primal, a very real link to something she had forgotten.

The first time it happened had been 2:10pm on a Monday afternoon in November. She glanced up at the mantle clock in the living room to check the time when the strangest feeling that she should go outside came over her. Curious, she got up and went out into the yard just as Ms. Tizdale was pulling up to their mailbox on her motorcycle. Handing her a stack of mail, she told her to tell her 'handsome uncle' hello before motoring on down the road.

When she mentioned it to Bo later than evening, he told her Ms. Tizdale was as reliable as a train schedule. Rain or shine, snow or sleet, she always delivered their mail at 2:13pm on the dot.

 _"Some part of you remembers,"_ he'd informed her, and tapped on her forehead.

More often, there was no easy explanation. Like leftover puzzle pieces, some emotional memories seemed to fall outside the boundaries of her immediate family. The psychologist had encouraged her to keep a log of these, in case she was able to connect them to something in the future.

Luke had bought her a small, spiral-bound notebook at Rhuebottom's and since then she had been jotting down anything which triggered one, and also anything she did which caused her family to shoot worried glances at each other as though she'd gone off her rocker. The list was getting alarmingly long.

This morning, the feeling had been prompted by checking the calendar for her physical therapy appointment. (She wasn't sure what the point of therapy was, the muscle damage her arm had sustained meant it would never function at full strength again, and the exercises made her ache to the point of tears.) Something about the little symbol in the corner of today's square had given her the notion that someone was coming to visit. Neither Uncle Jesse nor the boys knew of anyone who would be dropping by, and yet the feeling persisted.

Tonight was special, or _had been_ once _,_ even if she hadn't the foggiest idea why.

Rain had fallen earlier, bringing a chill to the unseasonably warm air. As the first stars appeared across the horizon, she pulled the quilt tighter around her shoulders and leaned her head against the porch post. The gaps in the clouds grew larger, revealing more and more stars, until finally the moon burst from behind the last veil, bright and full and majestic.

Bootlegging runs were done under full moons. Could she be remembering nights when Uncle Jesse had been a Ridgerunner? Had she stayed up late waiting for him to come back?

Maybe... _maybe_.

Only, she got the impression that this memory belonged to that mysterious 'other' category. Had there been someone else, someone important she had forgotten? She imagined a clandestine meeting against the dark of night at Hazzard Pond with the silver moonbeams caressing the leaves and burning like fire upon the water. Then she laughed at herself and shook her head.

Bootlegging runs. That was why the moon had called to her tonight. With a last look at it, she turned and went to bed.

* * *

Enos turned away from the wind and blowing snow to where a stand of white pine grew straight and narrow across the field, thinking that he'd rather be there watching the woods fill up with snow instead of on the frozen concrete of Highway 123 ten miles west of Paradise. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, giving himself a moment of respite from the chaos behind him. He counted to ten and held his breath, then let it out slowly, watching it blow away in the wind.

"Sheriff?"

"Yeah." He turned back around to face the deputy. "Call Ed and get him out here with his wrecker," he said, focusing again on the accident. "Tell him to...you know...stay back, though, until we get the guy out. I already called Joy to get hold of Harry to bring the ambulance to take him to Newberry. I reckon we don't need to hurry, but I wanna know this guy's BAC before they put him on the slab."

"Yes sir." Deputy Peter Logerstadt turned to look back at the older model Chevy sedan tangled in an enormous hemlock. "Must've been really going at it, to hit the tree that hard, eh?"

"Drunk drivers are idiots," was Enos' cynical reply. Pete nodded respectfully and went back to his patrol car to call the wrecker.

The floor board of the Chevy had been littered with beer cans, which were now littered with blood, bone, and brain matter. The amount of social drinking that went on up here had caught Enos blindsided. Many Yoopers seemed to think having a beer or two or ten was a part of daily living and that having a good time meant getting wasted. They hadn't quite known what to do with a guy who didn't drink. Thank goodness no one knew what his father had done for a living.

In the year and a half he'd been sheriff, he had seen more accidents involving drunken driving than he had in Los Angeles and Hazzard put together. Considering the entire population of Whitefish County was less than 1500, that made for some pretty sorry statistics.

This one had been complicated by heavy snowfall, and what was left of the car was rapidly turning into a white lump on the side of the road. At least the driver wasn't from Tamarack. The wallet Enos had fished out of the guy's back pocket identified him as John Allendale, age 42, from Bay Mills. Not much else to say about him, other than he'd had fourteen bucks cash and a scratch-off.

* * *

_**Christmas Day, 1987** _

"Say, Uncle Jesse, maybe we should add some other people to our gift exchange next year." Daisy shook the present Luke handed her, and frowned at its silence. "Since there's only four names in your hat."

"Well, Enos would've made-" Bo stopped short, his eyes taking on a 'deer in headlights' look. "Uh... I mean, there's been others who've joined in, over the years."

"Who's Enos?" she asked, not recognizing the name.

Uncle Jesse brushed invisible dirt off the knee of his overalls before answering. "Uh, well...Enos used to be a deputy here in Hazzard," he said, "but he moved away some time back."

"Oh." She studied the three of them, curiously, wondering why Uncle Jesse looked so worried, and why Luke was staring daggers at his cousin "What's wrong?"

Luke shook his head and gave her a half-hearted smile. "Ain't nothing wrong, Daisy," he said. "He was a good cop, lots of people missed him when he left."

"Well, with Cletus on the job, I can understand why," she grinned. Of the people she had 're-met' since the accident, Cletus was one of the quirkiest. Sweet as could be, but not much up top. "Why isn't Cooter part of the gift exchange? He's practically family." Cooter, who she vaguely remembered as one of Luke's wild and reckless friends, had turned into a pretty nice guy. There was even talk of him running for Congress!

"Cooter goes down to Alabama to see his daughter, Nancy Lou, for Christmas," said Uncle Jesse. "And Cooter's a far cry from a Duke. But, maybe adding a couple of others wouldn't be such a bad idea." He nodded at Daisy's present. "You gonna open that or keep it till next year?"

She tore off the wrapping paper and opened the box to find a new pair of fuzzy slippers. "Hey, thanks Luke!" She slipped her sock feet into them. "Perfect fit." She grabbed the gift wrapped in newspaper from underneath the tree and checked the tag. "Alright, I get to be Santa next. Bo, this one's for you from Uncle Jesse."

Later that night, after Rosco and Cletus had come and gone, and the carols had been sung and they had stuffed themselves full of leftover pie and ham, Daisy sat on her bed in the quiet of her room. In the lamplight, she bent her head over her journal and added a line to her list of things she didn't understand.

_Enos. A former deputy who used to be a part of the Duke family Christmas gift exchange._

She closed the book and leaned over to slide it inside the hole in her box springs. So many mysteries surrounded her past that she barely knew where to start. She was tired, and this one could wait for another day. After all, Uncle Jesse said he'd moved away a long time ago.

She got up, turned off the lamp, and went over to the window. The field beyond the farmhouse was dark and still, the stars only small pinpricks of light in the moonless sky. She raised her hand to the cold glass, wondering if the answers were out there, somewhere. Pieces of her life, floating lost and broken in that vast unknown.

* * *

Enos stood at the window of the station, watching the snow cascade in thick sheets of white. There were no lights, but the perpetual twilight of winter had come; a strange and eerie orange, as if the overcast sky burned with a hidden flame. In reality, it was the reflection of Tamarack's streetlamps off the clouds and bouncing back off the two and a half feet of snow that Superior had graced them with so far.

He had sent everyone else home to their families, keeping his deputies on call but working the full day himself. Why not? He had no family, no ties. To her credit Joy Yergen, the county's dispatcher, had complained it wasn't fair for him to work the whole day, and he'd been invited to at least a dozen family dinners. But it didn't feel right to intrude.

The snow was beautiful and peaceful and on any other night, it would make him happy to simply sit and stare at it out the window. Today, the isolation was a bleak reminder of all he had lost and of the secret pain tucked away deep inside his heart. He raised his hand to the window and watched its warmth cloud the glass. He pictured a tree full of lights, and hymns sung round a fireplace, surrounded by those who called him family -

The phone rang, interrupting his melancholia. He groaned and frowned at it, hoping it wasn't an accident. Surely people could stay off the streets for one night out of the year.

It rang a third time and he picked it up. "Whitefish County Sheriff's Department, Sheriff Strate speaking."

" _This is Doctor Fisher from HNJ Hospital in Newberry,"_ the woman on the line sounded confused. _"Are you the sheriff?"_

"Yes, ma'am, that's me. What can I do for you?"

 _"Oh geez, I'm sorry,"_ she laughed. _"I didn't expect anyone but dispatch there on Christmas night, I was just gonna leave a message for you to call me Monday morning. I wasn't gonna come in myself, but the grand kid got sick and my daughter and her husband decided to go on home, and you know how it is when you can't sleep. Thought I'd catch up on a few autopsies before it gets crazy on New Years. While I've got you here, though, you left a note about wanting the BAC on that accident down 123 on December 5th?"_

Forgetting the past, he switched his thoughts back to the present. "Yes, ma'am, I did. How high was it?"

 _"Well, that's a funny thing,"_ she said. " _I tested the BAC first and it came back negative."_

"Zero? He had to have had thirty empty beer cans in the car. You sure?"

 _"That's what I was thinking, too,"_ she said. _"So I sent the toxicology off to Waterford. It was in my box when I came in. Wanna know what your boy died of?"_

"I'm all ears."

_"Ethylene Glycol."_

"Anti-freeze!? Possum on a gumbush! How the heck did he get out to the middle of nowhere after drinking antifreeze?"

_"According to the serum bicarbonate in his body and amount of acidosis, the lab estimated he drank it between eighteen and twenty-four hours earlier, so you don't know if he did it himself or someone spiked his drink with it or what. Could be a suicide, though that's a bad way to go, eh?"_

"Sounds painful," he agreed. "Well, thanks for letting me know doctor. Will you send me a copy of the lab results?

_"You betcha, I'll mail them Monday. You have a yourself a good night, Sheriff."_

"You too, thanks."

He put the phone back in its cradle then pulled John Allendale's file out of his desk drawer and flipped through it. Nothing in particular stood out. He was a part time janitor at Bay Mills Community College during spring and summer, taking off falls and winters the last eight years to work on an iron ore freighter to earn a little extra. That wasn't unheard of for unmarried guys in the U.P. The freighters were good money if you didn't mind playing Russian Roulette with the weather on the lake.

Friends had seen him last at Smiley's bar in Bay Mills before he'd headed off with only one beer, saying he had to get up early and make it back to Sault Ste Marie before the last haul of the year. Roughly ten hours later, he was stretched out in Newberry's morgue dead of antifreeze poisoning.

Enos really, _really_ hated to call the state in on this one, but he wasn't equipped to test everything in that bar for ethylene glycol. He closed the file and set it on his desk.

Tomorrow, he would re-interview the witnesses and go talk to the bar owner and find out which ship he'd crewed on. Tonight was his own, and he would sit and watch the snow and allow himself one night to remember the world he'd left behind.

* * *

_A/N:_   
_BAC = Blood Alcohol Content._   
_Scratch-off = Lottery ticket_


	10. Things Fall Apart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A Northwoods sky is seldom black  
> and rarely can you see  
> the stars against the cloak of night  
> when lit by flames of green.  
> -the author

* * *

_**Thursday, March 24th, 1988** _

The sheet and comforter pooled around her waist as Daisy sat up in bed, sending a shiver through her in the chilly air. The dream was gone, but its tendrils still bore their ghostly, disjointed shadows. The feeling of understanding, of _knowing,_ lingered, but whatever memory she had seen from her past remained locked behind the veil of sleep; across a river wild and unnavigable with a bridge built only by dreams.

The dull, phosphorescent hands of her clock read just after 4:00am.

With a sob, she fell back onto her pillows and yanked the covers over her shoulders. Sleep had become a precious commodity, as unreliable as the Appalachian weather, and she knew at any minute the robins would start their early morning soliloquy and she would not be able to drown them out.

Everyone has their limit; a point to which their spirit can be stretched and still recover. As the days marched blithely into spring, Daisy wasn't sure how much more she could take. She felt trapped, like a character in a dusty history book, lost in a future through which she could see no road to follow.

A _'chirp! chirp!'_ came from the tree outside her window, and she pulled her extra pillow over her head with a groan. After a brief pause, the chirps continued, adding variations before settling down into a monotonous _'tweet, tweet, chirp, chirp, chirp, tweet, chirp, chirp, chirp,_ _chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp...'_

She chucked the pillow at the window where it smacked the glass before dropping to the floor. Knowing there would be no respite, she dragged herself out of bed, pulled on her robe and slippers, and went to start breakfast.

If she was being honest, she harbored a bit of resentment over the fact that the boys woke up to a hot breakfast at her expense. Regardless, Luke and Bo both had a knack for burning things so, unless she wanted to eat Cheerios and All Bran every morning, the hot meals were up to her. Uncle Jesse could cook, but he got a pass on account of he did more work than the three of them put together before the sun had fully risen.

She poured four small jelly jars with orange juice from the refrigerator, then opened the cabinet to the right of the sink to take down the heavy mixing bowl to make biscuits. It wasn't there, and it took her a moment to remember that it was now stored in the cabinet on the other side of the room.

She stomped over and took it out, setting it down on the table with annoyance. It wasn't the first morning she had forgotten where it was. In fact, finding things in this kitchen had turned out to be an almost daily irritation, as nothing seemed to be in the same place it had been when her aunt was alive. She reminded herself that the measuring cups were no longer in the drawer to the right of the sink but now on the left.

Grabbing the one cup measure, it caught on the hook of the can opener which in turn caught a wire whisk. Half a dozen utensils spilled out onto the floor.

"That's it!" she fumed, slinging the cup across the room. "I'm done with this dang kitchen!"

She scooped up the fallen utensils and slammed them down beside the mixing bowl, then pulled the offending drawer out of the frame and upended it onto the table. Other drawers followed and then the cabinets, and by the time Uncle Jesse came in to start his day every drawer and cabinet stood open and bare. The countertops were littered with stacks of casserole dishes, plates, crockery, and tupperware.

He stopped short at the mess, and she tried to wipe her eyes and turn towards the window before he saw her tears. A chair scraped against the floor behind her.

"Daisy, honey, come sit down a minute."

She didn't want a lecture. How many times could she listen to everyone assure her that it would be okay, to just 'keep going and things would get better'? She stared out across the road, wishing she was somewhere else.

"I'm fine, Uncle Jesse."

"I know that," he said, unperturbed. "Still, I reckon you could use a break. Come sit down."

Another chair scraped back from the table, and she sighed and walked over to it, plopping down as though she was a child taken to task for misbehaving. That, at least, would feel familiar - and warranted. Just the other day, she'd found a garter snake beside the chicken coop, and had the overwhelming desire to put it in the General Lee to see what the boys would do. The memory made her grin.

A childish stunt like that would be a red flag that she'd been skipping her anxiety medication, though. While Xanax eased the trauma of her amnesia and helped her sleep, it made her feel _flat_ , like nothing mattered anymore. She supposed that was the point, but she hated it almost as much as the feeling of helplessness.

"You know," he began, "Lavinia had a pride for this kitchen that neither me nor the boys could appreciate. She was forever taking us to task for putting things in the wrong places."

She looked up and they shared a sad smile. "Yeah, I remember."

He nodded. "None of us did a very good job of keeping it up after she was gone. Then it passed on to you, and that wasn't fair, not at your age, but you helped keep us together that next year." He reached over and brushed the tears off her cheek. "I think you were the strongest of all of us."

"I sure don't feel strong anymore, Uncle Jesse." That was the biggest understatement of all.

"Well now, I don't reckon being strong means you'll never feel weak, it just means there's somethin' in here-" he tapped her heart, "-that won't let you give up. I've seen you when you didn't know what to do, and I've seen you pull yourself up time and again and dust the dirt off and get back up."

"Uncle Jesse, was this how I felt after L.D. left me?" She still had a hard time believing she had married such no account loser, and she probably wouldn't have even found out about him, except that her insurance still had him listed as her next of kin. Uncle Jesse had taken her aside and told her everything he knew about her ex-husband, though there were parts he could only speculate about.

At first, she had thought L.D. would be the key to explaining some of those random emotional memories on her list. But L.D., who seemed as worthless as a lump of moldy bread, didn't remind her of anything. He was just a name on a piece of paper. A _mistake_.

"For a while," he said. "But then, you decided to put it all behind you and go back to school."

"Was I happy? About going to college?"

His looked away, considering her question. "At first you just wanted to get away from Hazzard," he recalled. "You wanted to start over somewhere. That first semester took a lot out of you; you didn't know anyone and it had been a long time since you had been in school. But then, you settled in and started to figure out what _you_ really wanted, and not what everyone expected you to want."

She wondered what had made her want to leave Hazzard. It wasn't as if L.D. was lurking around - by all accounts he hadn't been seen in town since he'd left her high and dry. Was there something else she had been running away from? "I wish I could be as sure I'll get through this as you seem to be, Uncle Jesse."

"The same Daisy who made that decision to start over is the same one that's sitting in front of me right now," he said, patting her hand. "And no matter what roads you choose, we'll always be here for you." He studied her for a minute. "Is there something else on your mind?"

"I just..," she hesitated, thinking of how to phrase her other concern. "Don't take this wrong, Uncle Jesse, but I'm gonna go stir crazy staying cooped up here all day. I need a job. Ain't there anything I can do other than work at the Boar's Nest?"

She'd overheard a conversation she wasn't intended to hear last week, between the boys and Uncle Jesse over how they were going to manage to scrape by without her working. For the most part her amnesia was limited to past memories, except where arithmetic was concerned. She couldn't do it in her head anymore, nor could she keep drink orders straight without writing it all down. She had made it half a day at the Boar's Nest in January before she realized, no matter how good of a waitress or bartender she had been before, it was not where she belonged now.

"I figured you might ask about that some time," he said. "So I did some thinking on it. There was a job you held for a little while that you seemed to love, but you just didn't have time for it."

She sat up straighter, intrigued. "What was it?"

"You wrote some articles for the Hazzard Gazette now and then."

"The paper?" She felt a flicker of excitement, and her mind recalled the smell of ink and newspaper.

"Did that remind you of something?" he asked, noticing the change in her expression.

"Yeah, it did," she grinned. "I remembered how the ink smelled. I think you're right, I must have really liked it." She wondered why she hadn't done that full time, surely it was a better job than the Boar's Nest? "You think I might be able to get a job there again?"

He chuckled. "Actually, Mr. Amos came to me about it," he admitted. "He's been thinking of doing a column on some of the citizens of Hazzard, and wondered if you would be interested in doing the interviews and writing it. He said he thought it might help you feel like you were part of the Hazzard community again."

"But, Uncle Jesse, I don't remember anyone. How would I..," she stopped herself, understanding dawning and bringing a lump to her throat. "He's giving me a way to meet people, isn't he?"

"He's a good man," said Jesse, "Everyone knows what happened to you and wants to help, but they don't know how. He's hoping you'll say 'yes'."

For the first time since the accident, a dim path glowed through the dark ahead. I was hard to go to town. People would come up and ask how she was doing or wish her well, but they were all strangers to her, and she was too embarrassed to ask them who they were. Maybe if she met more people - if she found her place in Hazzard again, it would counteract the terrible loneliness which seemed to color all her days.

"Tell him that I'll do it, Uncle Jesse," she decided, right then and there. "In fact, it sounds perfect."

Uncle Jesse looked around at the mess in the room. "I'll tell Bo and Luke to help you put things where you want them to go," he said. "And you let them climb that ladder."

* * *

Lake Superior lay like a flat, blue stone stretched out beneath the wool-gray sky. Waves rocked in and out, like an overfull bowl tipping gently back and forth, sending water gurgling among the eddies. Further away down the beach, the gulls were fighting over fish thrown up by the tide.

The late-March day was unseasonably warm in the mid-60s with the sun somewhere high above that grayness, but the wind, which blew perpetually here on the headland, carried with it the crisp smell of coming snow. Enos had adapted to the long, harsh winters sooner than he had thought possible, but the bitter cold still gave him a ripple of uncertain terror. He was an anomaly here - like the sea glass thrown up by the tides, and part of him wondered if a southern boy, who had only seen real snow a handful out of his 36 years, should tempt fate so readily.

Then the nights would come, and he would be blown away - forgetting his fears and everything he'd left behind. If the Pacific had no memory, then Superior was oblivion.

"You should've come to the Locks with me for Opening Day," said the woman next to him, interrupting his thoughts in her peculiar accent. "The Algoma Central freighters were the first five upbound and downbound. Not surprising since they were already lined up two days early."

He glanced at the striking figure standing on the rocks in the shadow of the whitewashed lighthouse. Her jet black hair streamed in the wind and around her ankles billowed a skirt in the colors of fall leaves. He wondered if she knew how attractive she looked, and if she had known he was coming to the Point today. Probably. Melinda, while not the gossiping type, seemed to know all things at all times where he was concerned. He suspected several of the townsfolk were matchmaking.

Midnight on the second Tuesday in March had been Opening Day at the Sault Ste Marie Locks. It was a popular event, drawing hundreds of locals each year to see which ship would gain the honor of having the first run between Lake Superior and Lake Huron. "The Soo's a long way off by land," he reminded her. "I couldn't get away. Maybe next year."

She smiled at him, knowingly, as though his words implied more than their face value. "Next year, then." She turned her face back into the wind, looking off into the distance at the rolling waves, and Enos wondered if Melinda Zagadka was thinking of her homeland - what little she could remember of it. Some tiny seaport town in Russia called Baltiysk. "I should get back," she sighed, at last. "The museum has been busy this week."

She gathered her skirts as she stepped off the rocks and back onto the narrow plank boardwalk. Without another word, she walked past him, her fingers pressing lightly against his shoulder in a gesture of what could be taken as a friendly good-bye. People were very huggy and touchy-feeling up here in the North, and he tried not to read more into it, making a conscious effort not to look behind him as the specter of her touch lingered. Something about the way she always looked at him and touched him made Enos feel as though he was already caught and just hadn't realized it, yet.

He didn't hear the deputy behind him until he cleared his throat.

"Sheriff? Do you want I should go back and check the construction over on Highway 123, yet?"

Five years ago, the state had repaved a half mile stretch of 123 with a new form of asphalt. It hadn't stood up well against the U.P.'s freeze-thaw cycle and had resulted in a pothole filled section of their otherwise pristine concrete roads. Enos was rapidly understanding why Yoopers had little patience for downstate law makers who treated the UP as their litter box. Why couldn't they use their own shoddy roads for test pavement?

"No, that's alright Pete. Rodney says there ain't been any traffic out there for hardly an hour, and it's late. Why don't you go down to Paradise and have Buster fill out a report on that abandoned car at the motel. It's probably just someone who got himself drunk out in the woods looking for turkeys and ain't found his way back, yet, but we still oughta check in out."

"Yes, sir." said Pete. He turned a quick eye out across the bay. "Feels like winter coming on again soon, eh? Be a late summer this year, I'll wager."

An involuntary shiver crept up Enos' spine to hear his fears spoken aloud by someone who would know. Pete was fourth generation Yooper and, like most other locals, he spoke of snow like it was manna from Heaven. Guys like Pete got a kick out of those stragglers from warmer climates who needed to wear heavy coats in 40 degree weather.

"Just so summer doesn't abandon us altogether."

Pete wasn't fooled. "Oh doncha worry now, Sheriff, you'll get used to it," he assured. "Give it another few years and you'll be thinking thirty-five degrees is downright balmy. Gotta have the cold to appreciate the hot, my granddaddy always said, God rest his soul. Heck, my sis moved down to Florida, and she says they only have two seasons; hot and rainy. She never thought she'd miss it up here, but she does."

* * *

_**Monday, March 28th, 1988** _

* * *

"So, what can I do for you, Miss Reporter?" joked Cooter, tipping precariously back against the wall of his shop on two legs of a plastic chair.

"You're gonna fall flat on your backside if you don't sit in that chair right," she told him. "I'm not getting paid to report on injuries and accidents."

"Fair enough," he said, sitting his chair on four legs. He brushed a greasy conglomeration of springs and screws off a box on the table next to him and opened it up. "You want a donut? I still got a few left from the other day."

She watched, horrified, as he brushed one off and bit into it. It crunched. "How long ago was 'the other day'!?"

"Clyde brought them down when he dropped off some parts on Monday." He took another bite as she gagged.

"It's Thursday!"

He shrugged. "Suit yourself," he said, shoving the last half into his mouth. "So, what can I tell you about yours truly that everyone wants to hear?"

"Just start at the beginning and tell me about your family. I'm especially interested in how you're not a criminal, seeing as how the only memories I have of you are from back when you were a kid. Did you know that every time you came to the farm, our cows dried up?" She thought about Christmas and how her uncle didn't view him as family. "I don't think Uncle Jesse's forgiven you, yet."

"Oh now, we've smoothed things out considerably over the years," he assured her, brushing away her concern. "Say, did Bo and Luke ever tell you about the time I stole the President's limousine and took if for a joyride? That's a good story."

"If you're thinking about running for congress, I'd leave that one out."

"True enough, Daisy-girl. You know, I don't know if Mr. Amos is taking suggestions, but I know who you oughta go talk to after me. Someone who everyone in Hazzard's heard of, but they don't know anything about him."

"Who's that?"

"Nice old-timer named Arthur Sills who lives up in the hills off Cedar Point. He's always going around town picking up people's junk, but no one's really sure what he does with it."

"Thanks for the heads up, I'll ask Mr. Amos about him." She scribbled the name down in her notebook and then switched the tape player to record. "So, Cooter, tell me about how you got started fixing cars."

Cooter's eyes grew dreamy. "Well, it all started when I was eight and wanted a car of my very own..."

* * *

"Thanks, Joy!" Enos peeked into the white paper bag, took a deep breath, and smiled serenely.

She shrugged off her jacket and tossed it over the chair at the dispatch desk. "You're lucky," she grinned. "There was only one steak pasty left and the road crews was coming in just behind me. Julie says if you call her next time, she'll save you one."

"That's awfully nice of her," he said, taking the warm pasty out of the bag, "but with my luck, she'd save one for me and then I'd get called out somewhere." He bit into the flaky crust before setting it down on its wax paper wrapper. "Oh, the school called while you were out. Wanted to know if we can send a deputy over to talk to the kids about shoreline safety next month."

"Oh geez," she complained. "Kids around here have been around the lake all their lives, what do they need a safety class for? The school'd be better off calling in one of them freighter captains to recruit for summer jobs." She stopped short, and looked up at him, worried. "No, never mind. Please don't tell them I said that."

He shook his head. "Don't worry, I know you're just jawing." Working on a Great Lakes freighter was a respectable job, but memories were long and still too fresh for ships to start recruiting here, especially not at the high school. Maybe when this generation was older, but there were still too many people here who remembered 1939. "I never knew what I was missing back in Georgia," he said, switching the topic back to lunch and the huge lump of flaky bread stuffed with potatoes, steak, and rutabagas. "I'm starting to believe you people who say this is God's country."

"You're fitting in just fine up here, Enos," she laughed. "You should try-"

_"Unit 3 to dispatch, please respond. I've got a...a situation out here."_

Joy grabbed the headset. "Copy Unit 3, go ahead."

_"There's a 10-35 DOS out near the junction of Genes Road and North Goddard, out by the tracks."_

Enos grabbed his jacket and ran out the door.

"Copy Unit 3, Unit 1 in route. Unit 2 please respond to dispatch for backup."

Enos climbed into his truck and flipped on the lights as he pulled out of the parking lot, glad he had required everyone to learn the Michigan State Police 10-codes. The last thing they needed was every local in the county driving out to the middle of nowhere to see a dead body. He wondered about the 10-35, though. Finding dead bodies in the woods, while unusual, unfortunately wasn't unheard of. More often than not a "DOS" or "dead on scene" turned out to be a deer hunter who had gotten drunk and frozen to death out in his tree stand, but deer season was long over. The low temperatures had been up in the 40's lately and 10-35 meant homicide/major crime.

_"Unit 3 to Unit 1, please respond."_

"Copy Unit 3, go ahead."

 _"Sheriff, I'm not sure what to do."_ The deputy's voice was shaky, which concerned Enos even more. Rodney Treado was 6'1" and built like Paul Bunyan and not scared of anything. Both of his deputies were rookies, however, with only four years on the force between them. Enos had seen a lot more than they had. _"I've got a witness out here that's pretty shaken up."_

"Go ahead and block off both roads and rope off the area. Unit 2 is in route to help, and I'm about 15 minutes out. Let the witness sit in your car."

_"Copy Unit 1."_

More and more, Enos felt this wasn't going to be the usual DOS scenario. He drove another mile, and then thumbed the radio back on. "Unit 1 to dispatch."

_"Go ahead Unit 1."_

"Where's your better half at today, Joy? Anywhere close?"

_"He was checking fishing licenses out at Tahquamenon Falls today. You want I should call him?"_

"Yeah, go ahead. If it's on state land, he should be there. And call out the rest of the team, this seems kind of prickly. Unit 1 out."

There was silence for a handful of heartbeats and then: _"CO-590 please respond to Whitefish dispatch."_

... ... ... Nothing. Enos hoped he wasn't too far from his vehicle to hear the call.

After another minute, Joy's voice came again. _"CO-590 please respond to Whitefish dispatch."_

_"Dispatch this is CO-590, what's up?"_

_"Unit 1 requests assistance at Genes and Goddard by the railroad tracks. 10-35 DOS, over."_

_"10-4 dispatch. In route."_

Enos breathed a sigh of relief. Anything out of the ordinary would be easier with another experienced officer on the scene. While most people only thought of the DNR in terms of fishing and hunting, senior conservation officers in Michigan had the same training as police officers with statewide jurisdiction over state land and natural areas. Sergeant Bruce Yergen was one of the best, and he and Enos had become fast friends. In fact, it had been Bruce who had shown him the ropes of ice fishing.

As his truck sped down the bleached, salt-stained roads, he prepared himself for what he might find. But the reality turned out to be worse than he could imagine.

Rodney and Pete had angled both of their patrol cars to block off the narrow roads leading into the intersection, but there was already a small gaggle of locals congregating beside the signpost, some with beer cans in hand. He rolled his eyes and tried not to think about them driving. He pulled up perpendicular to Rodney's car and climbed out as Pete came out of the woods on his left to meet him. His face was ashen.

"Sheriff -"

"Not here," Enos interrupted him, nodding towards the onlookers. "Just let me follow you."

The deputy nodded and walked back into the cover of trees with Enos trailing him. Just inside the wood line he spoke again. "Sheriff, I don't know what the ever-loving hell we've got here," he said. "Nothing like this happens up here in the UP, at least not that I ever heard of. Rodney's talking to the old guy who found him. He was just checking on his bait pile for deer and there he was, he said. Poor guy's pretty messed up. Heck, I feel pretty messed up!"

Enos watched his feet as Pete spoke, not wanting to trip and fall. The snow, which had melted off in open areas, was still six inches to a foot deep under the shade of the forest. The wind picked up, rustling the boughs of the white pines. He stopped, listening. Across the wind came a sound he didn't associate with being out in the woods, and when he finally identified the soft creak of a rope rubbing against a tree branch, he quickened his steps.

They crossed the last rise, and now he could see what had overwhelmed his deputies and the witness.

"Did anyone touch anything?"

"No sir, we just left it all like it is."

He nodded and took out a pair of latex gloves from the pocket of his tactical belt. Snapping them on, he approached the victim, taking care not to walk on the blood soaked snow underneath. "Sergeant Yergen's on his way," he said. "And Joy already called the coroner and photographer. Would you go wait for them and bring them down when they get here? It shouldn't be long."

"Yes, sir!"

Enos stood back and surveyed the body, trying to decide the correct way to go about processing the scene. This was more than he'd expected. Gingerly, he removed the wallet from the man's back pocket and opened it up.

There was no driver's license, but there was a Merchant Mariner Credential card for Gino Spione, age 26, from Chicago, Illinois, with a place of birth listed as Budapest, Hungary.

"That's a bad way to go out, Gino," Enos murmured to the corpse.

The man hung freely by one leg in a noose, and the rope creaked under the weight as the wind caught and swung the body. His hands were tied behind his back. Strips of flesh had been peeled off from his cheeks and arms with almost surgical precision, leaving dried rivuilets of blood around them. That wasn't the cause of death though. His disembowled intestines hung like fat, gray worms from a slice across his abdomen.

The snow below him bore testimony to the torture he endured before he was gutted. Trails of blood, rust red against the white, showed where he had been pushed to swing while he was bleeding, leaving strange looping patterns in the snow, reminding Enos of a tracing from an old Spirograph toy. Behind him, twigs crunched and he turned to see Sergeant Yergen, followed by the the coroner and his photographer.

"Well damn," said Bruce looking at the corpse. "And to think I was complaining about being bored earlier. I take it back." He turned to Enos. "You got an ID?"

Enos handed him the Merchant Mariner Credentials. "If he's got credentials, you'd think some freighter would be missing him right about now. Guess he missed his ride." He looked through the rest of the wallet, hoping for more information as the photographer took pictures of the scene. Behind a McDonald's coupon was a post-it note with a name, date, and time.

**Elcid Barrett**   
**December 15**   
**4:30AM**

He stared at it, then looked back up at the dead man, recalling another strange, unexplained death in the county, not so long ago.

"Remember that guy who we found in the wreck out on 123?" he asked Bruce. "The one who died from anti-freeze poisoning?"

"Sure do. What's got you thinking about him?"

Enos handed him the post-it note. "The Elcid Barrett was the same ship that guy worked on."

The two shared a grim look. "If there's someone with a vendetta on that ship, we're a little late," said Bruce. "The Elcid Barret's not in port anymore."


	11. Pandora's Box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Those of you who have read The Story of Us will recognize the character of Arthur Sills, the intrepid junk collector of Hazzard, but he's never been 'fleshed' out before. Enjoy!
> 
> .  
> Chapter 11: Pandora's Box
> 
> "Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing  
> Only a signal shown, and a distant voice in the darkness;  
> So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,  
> only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence."  
> — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

* * *

_**April 18th, 1988** _

The air of the corridor was cool, even through his jacket. Helen Newberry Joy Hospital in rural Luce County, Michigan, was the largest medical center within 150 miles of Tamarack. It was small and efficient, but quiet, and Enos saw only three people between the main lobby and the elevator bank. Like all hospitals, there was a smell of antiseptic and iodine and beneath that something nebulous and undefinable that called to mind sickness, pain, and fear. Probably more psychological than real, he reckoned. People didn't generally come into hospitals unless there was a problem.

He pushed the down arrow beside the elevator door and waited. It opened with a _ding_ , and he hit the button for the basement. The feeling of isolation was powerful in the little metal box, even with the piped in music ( _must it always be polka?_ ). He realized he was picking at his nails and stopped himself. As Sheriff, he had made a conscious effort not to fidget in front of others, knowing it made him look vulnerable and nervous. When he was finished here, he promised himself a nice long walk through the woods. Maybe he'd stop at the logging museum he had passed on the way. The more he learned about the local culture, the better.

The door opened into the basement, and he only had to follow his nose to find the morgue.

"Sorry I didn't already have him out, Sheriff," the medical examiner apologized as he entered. "I'm sorta behind the eight-ball here. It's been a busy spring already." She pulled one of the handles in a wall of cubbies, and Mr. Spione rolled out on a slab with a metallic clatter.

"That's alright," he told her. "I didn't know how early I could get away this morning."

He looked down at the body, now unclothed and stitched neatly back together at the midsection. It was the first time he had seen the victim since they had cut him down from the tree and packed him off to HNJ Hospital to await an official autopsy. Apparently Mr. Spione was a connoisseur of unique tattoos.

He looked up at the doctor. "Did you get pictures of all of these?"

"Absolutely, and the clothes are bagged and labeled for you, too. as well as the rope that was around his leg. There's a folder with the pictures on the counter." She pointed to the vivid eyes just below each clavicle. "Kind of Orwellian, eh? Like Big Brother."

The tattoos were crudely done with an ink pen and a needle suggesting prison or back alley, but the artist had talent. The eyes were lifelike enough to imagine the spirit of some demon might rise up from the dead flesh at any moment, and an ornate cross spanned his chest. "Any local gangs use eyes like these?"

"No, and I saw plenty of tats down in Detroit when I did my residency. If I had a guess, I'd say organized crime, but I'm not an expert on that. There's a guy down at the Illinois Crime lab in Chicago who might be able to help you; Herbert Douglas is his name. He wrote a couple of books on tattoo analysis. I can probably find his number for you."

"His merchant mariner card listed his birthplace in Hungary, but he lived in Chicago," he recalled. That had explained the abandoned car at the motel in Paradise with expired Illinois tags registered to a Maria Spione that now sat inside their impound fence. "I've gotta take a trip down there and talk to his mother day after tomorrow, so I'll take the pictures and see if I can get in touch with the crime lab. I haven't gotten very far into his past, but I'll see what I can dig up about the area he grew up in."

She nodded and picked up the folder with his pictures and pulled out one. "This is what his back looks like."

An Eastern Orthodox style cathedral with three domes spread across his upper back with the face of a Madonna and Child above it on one shoulder and a tiger head on the other. Enos had seen a fair number of tattoos at the LAPD, but most had been associated with various gangs or sex traffickers in the area. She was right, these had more of an organized flair.

He put the picture back into the folder she handed him. "Was there anything else? Toxicology report?"

She shook her head. "All negative. The only other interesting thing I found was how bad his lungs were. This guy must have smoked like a chimney; unfiltereds, judging by the amount of tar in him. He had the lungs of someone who had chain smoked for forty years."

"Lots of the men who work ships smoke." He walked around the body, trying to make out some of the smaller tattoos on the man's arms. Dying hanging upside down meant the blood had pooled in his arms, hands, and head; the dark lividity obscuring any marks on the skin. "Could you make out anything on the darker parts?"

"A couple of small tattoos showed up on his hands under infrared. There's a picture."

He looked through them and pulled out the one of the man's right hand...and froze. Taking a deep breath, he pushed the memory from his thoughts, but his hand found the edge of the metal slab and he leaned on it.

"Recognize something?"

"Maybe," he murmured. "Have you seen this kind of star before?"

She shook her head. "Not with so many points," she said. "It's similar to a nautical star, though, and with him working a ship..."

"Could be." He aimed for nonchalant and failed as he put the picture away. The smell of the room was back, pressing in around him like a fleshy hand, and he knew he had to get out. He glanced down at his watch. "Ding dang, it's already past eleven. I'd better get back to Tamarack, you said you had some evidence bags for me?"

"Sure do, let me grab them for you, and I'll find the number for that crime lab."

* * *

It was after lunch before Enos arrived back at the sheriff's station in Tamarack. He wedged the door open with his shoulder, trying not to drop his armload of evidence bags.

"You know, Sheriff, the good Lord didn't mean for you to carry everything in one trip, doncha know," Joy chided him, jumping up to help him. "Is this all the stuff from Mr. Spione?"

He dropped the rest of the bags on his desk and lay the package of pictures beside his phone. "Yep, this is it. Did Pete get a box made up on this fella, yet?"

"Sure did. Top of the second shelf."

He walked down the hall, past the restrooms and into the closet sized room they used for evidence storage and retrieved a banker's box labeled 'Gino Spione'. There was no sense in putting it away; he'd be working on this until the cows came home or until it was solved - whichever came first.

What he really needed was to talk to the crew of the Elcid Barrett, but it wouldn't be back in port until October. It irked him to have to suspend his investigation for six months, but such was the nature of Great Lakes shipping, and the radios on the ships were used only in emergency situations. All he could do in the meantime was try to shed some light on Gino's past and get a better idea of what he was dealing with. He hoped.

He put the lid on the box and set it on the floor behind his desk, then grabbed an empty evidence bag and a pair of gloves from a drawer. "I'm gonna go take a closer look at that car of Ms. Spione's out yonder," he told Joy. "Let me know if anyone calls."

Their impound yard was just a 50' by 100' area surrounded by a chain link fence behind the station, and right now, the dark blue Escort with a missing hubcab was the only car inside. Enos unlocked the door and pulled it open. It smelled like old french fries. Supporting himself by one knee on the front seat, he moved both it and the passenger side all the way back and began feeling underneath, looking for anything his deputies had missed during their initial search.

It was pretty clean, just a few straw wrappers and bottle caps that he threw onto the passenger seat. He wasn't sure what he was looking for, just a scrap that would tell him more about Gino, he supposed. Giving up, he climbed out and pulled up the lever on the bottom of the driver's seat to move it forward again.

His fingers brushed against something wedged into the springs of the seat.

He pulled it out and looked it over, not sure what it was. The size and shape reminded him of one of those little wrapped up bars of soap they had in hotels, only it was an empty box and smelled like burnt matches. He couldn't read the printing on cover, but the letters CCCP clued him in on what language it was. There was handwriting under the flap, presumably also in Russian.

Dropping it into the empty evidence bag, he shut and relocked the door. There was only one person around Tamarack who might be able to read that writing and he was anxious to find out what he could as soon as possible. He looked up at the sky; there was no hint of rain, and the weather seemed almost balmy in the mid-70's. It was as good a day as any to visit the Point.

* * *

There were two yellow buses and almost a dozen cars in the parking lot of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, owing to the beautiful day and the history of the point and its lighthouse. Bells chimed against the door as Enos entered and he moved off to the side to let his eyes adjust, out of the way of the visitors milling about the small gift shop.

This time of the year business was good, and the museum brought in almost seventy percent of the county's revenue. It was a place steeped in lore, dedicated to the memories of all those who had lost their lives on the lakes. A crowd of school-aged kids brushed past him, laughing and running towards the parking lot. He waited until they disappeared and then made his way into the museum.

He had been here dozens of times, and yet each visit captured his attention just as much as the first. His fingers trailed across the plexiglass box containing the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald, and he thought of the twenty-nine men who had gone down with the ship. It had happened only twelve years ago, making it the most recent freighter claimed by Superior. He had an awful feeling it wouldn't be the last.

Melinda sat behind the information desk, her dark hair spilling across her shoulders, unaware of his presence. He leaned his elbows onto the counter and cleared his throat.

"Enos!" she gasped, startled.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to sneak up on you."

Her hand pressed against her breast to slow her breathing. "I wasn't expecting you today," she said. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I know you're awful busy, but do you have a minute?" He gestured outside towards the bay. "I've got something I'd like you to take a look at." She gave him a strange smile, and he wondered if she had taken his offer the wrong way, after all English wasn't her first language.

"Sure, I'd love a walk."

They walked up the hill, past the lighthouse, and down to the shore. The gulls wheeled and cried above them, and she laughed as two of them landed beside a crawdad and fought over it like a pair of toothless old men.

"They remind me of some old friends of mine," he told her. "Sounds a lot like Bo and Luke when they've got their eyes on the same girl."

She sat down in the scrub grass on the side of a large sand dune, and he followed her, leaving a respectable distance between them.

"Do you miss them?" she asked.

"Who?"

"Your friends, Bo and Luke, and the other people in Georgia. You never talk about them."

He shrugged and looked out over the waves. "Sure, I miss them," he answered. "I practically grew up with them."

"And yet still, here you are."

He didn't answer. She had tried to wheedle information out of him before. It wasn't her fault that he wasn't ready to move on, though, and he didn't want to push her away.

"I lost someone," he told her, at last. He felt her turn to study him, but he kept his eyes on the water.

"Someone you loved?"

"I thought I did once," he said, softly. "Maybe I didn't understand what love was." Here, at the other end of the world where no one knew Daisy, it was easier to admit.

They watched the gulls together and listened as the tide rushed in and out. She drew her knees up underneath her chin and folded her arms around them, and Enos stole a glance at her from the corner of his eye.

Melinda was as much of an enigma here as himself, and she had divulged precious little of her childhood and adolescence to him. How she had come from a Russian province to find herself caretaker of the Great Lakes Museum, he didn't know, only that she had been adopted at five and taken away from her homeland. He wasn't even sure of her age - younger than him to be sure, but her eyes seemed old, like someone who had seen a little too much of the wrong side of life. He'd come to know that look while working in LA, and he knew better than to pry.

"Did you have something to show me?" she asked, interrupting his thoughts. "I need to get back to the museum."

"Possum on a gumbush! I nearly forgot what I came for." He pulled the evidence bag from his jacket pocket and handed it to her. "I think it's Russian, but I can't make heads or tails of it. I thought since-"

"Since I was born in Russia, I could read it?" She laughed. "I'll take a look, but I remember very little Russian."

"I don't even know what I'm looking at."

She turned it over, front to back. "This was a pack of cigarettes," she said. "That much I know. My father smoked and these are what the government issued packs looked like in the Motherland."

"What about the handwriting under the flap?" He had put it in the evidence bag with the flap up so he wouldn't need to touch it. "I'm more interested in what that says."

"That's not Russian," she said, shaking her head. "It's similar. Maybe Polish or Czech?"

"Hungarian?" he offered.

She stood up and handed him the evidence bag before shaking the sand from her skirt. "It could be. I can't read Hungarian, either." She stepped closer to him, drawing his attention into her eyes. "I have a dictionary, at home. Why don't you come for supper Friday night, and we'll see if we can decipher it."

"I'm much obliged for the offer," he said, not sure it was the writing Melinda was intent on deciphering. "I've gotta be down in Chicago later this week, and I'll have to play catch up after that. I'll have to take a raincheck."

"That's alright," she assured him. "I'm sure I'll ask again."

 _I'm sure you will,_ he thought to himself.

* * *

Daisy pulled the car into the gravel drive off Cedar Point Road, listening to the choppy idle of the unremarkable brown sedan which Cooter, bless his heart, had loaned her. She was grateful to have the freedom to come and go as she pleased, even if she didn't understand how her brain still remembered how to drive.

The day was hot, already in the upper 80's, and a fine spray of yellow pollen coated the hood. The neat, single story house with white siding was bounded by an eight foot tall fence on either side which hid the back of the property. The front lawn was cluttered with and assortment of various objects; metal guttering lay beside stacks of worn tires and piles of rusty farm implements. She supposed that most people would have equated it with a junk yard, except for how neatly trimmed the lawn was, and the house itself stood in good repair.

She walked around the piles and up the porch steps, ducking under a collection of wind chimes before knocking on the door.

It opened with a creak, and a bald headed man with a white handle-bar mustache smiled jovially at her. "Hey there, Daisy, come on in and sit a spell, wontcha?" He pushed the door open wider and motioned her inside. "I couldn't believe it when Mr. Amos called the other day saying he wanted me to be in your new column. They must be running out of interesting stories!" His face reddened with pride. "You did a mighty good job with Cooter Davenport and Paul Rhuebottom."

"Thanks, Mr. Sills, that's real kind of you to say. Cooter was easy, but Mr. Rhuebottom turned out to be a man of few words."

The older man chuckled. "You shoulda heard Paul back in his school days," he said. "He'd like to never shut up."

Daisy ducked into the house, expecting to see the same hoard displayed inside as out, and was taken aback by the neatness and normality of it. There were no piles of anything anywhere, just a cozy little living room with a free-standing gas stove in one corner, a couch and easy chair and a small television on a rolling cart. She almost forgot what she was doing there. "Cooter suggested I come talk to you, Mr. Sills," she explained.

"Now then, girl, you can call me Art, like everyone else does. Mr. Sills makes me sound too old." He rubbed his bald head. "And I've got more than enough to make me feel that way already."

She grinned, taking an instant liking to him. "Art then," she agreed, shaking his hand. "I'm surprised. I thought I'd see more of your collections inside."

"You mean my _junk_?" he laughed. "Well, my wife Doris has been gone nearly thirty years come this June, God rest her soul, but she had her standards, she did. I expect the house still feels like her domain since I'm outside most of the time. It just felt right to keep it up. If you don't mind, I thought we'd go sit out yonder on the back porch." He motioned towards a door at the other end of the kitchen. "Got some lemonade waiting out there."

They walked through the tidy kitchen, wallpapered in white with prim pink roses, and out the screen door to the back porch. Daisy stopped halfway out, so surprised by what she was seeing in his back yard that the door whacked her on the shoulder.

"Mr. Sills!...I mean, Art! Why, this is incredible!"

The area behind the fence, shielded from passersby, was bigger than the Hazzard fairgrounds and filled from one end to the other. This was no junkyard, though. It was... Well, she really didn't know _how_ to describe it.

It was a _menagerie._ There were animals and monsters; spaceships and strange machines; all cobbled together using things he had gathered over the years.

Art waved aside her compliment, though he looked proud as punch. "Oh now, it's just tinkering, but it's kept me busy," he said. "I've always loved to collect junk, but things got a little out of hand when I started using my welder to put it all together. I reckon it ain't bothering no one."

"Bothering!? Are you kidding?" She couldn't take her eyes off of the yard. "You should go into business!" She pointed to a six foot tall chicken made from what looked to be forks and egg beaters. "Why, I'll bet some big city people in fancy houses would pay a fortune for that!"

He laughed until he began to cough, and she patted him on his back and handed him a glass of lemonade from the table. "You're awful kind, Daisy," he wheezed, taking a sip. "You don't think folks would call the men in white suits if they knew I had a thirty foot dinosaur made out of pie pans in my backyard?"

"I think everyone would be blown away to know what you've been doing back here all these years." She uncapped the lens of the camera slung around her neck. "Do you mind if I take some pictures?"

"Shoot, you can take as many pictures as you like," he told her. "Help yourself to a glass of lemonade, and then I'll take you on a tour."

After a glass of lemonade and a couple of basic questions about Art's childhood and family, she followed him off the porch and into a land created by his imagination. She tagged along happily, feeling like a kid on a school field trip.

The sculptures weren't all that was hiding out on his property. Several sheds were tucked amongst the odds and ends, each with their own theme. One was filled with hubcaps, each hung horizontally with fishing line from the rafters at different levels. Another held an immense ball of phone line as tall and wide as the shed with only feet to spare around it.

On and on they wandered, uncovering more welded oddities crammed in around piles of rusty bicycles, golf clubs, and more tires. At last, they came to the far corner of the property and a larger shed with a double wide barn door in the end. The air smelled musty and old as he pulled the latch and opened it. Fine particles of silty dust blew out into the sunshine.

"I'm afraid this barn ain't as imaginative as the others are," he warned her. "But I do love the cars."

She stepped in after him. Automobiles, ancient ones from before they were known simply as 'cars', sat in neat rows bearing names of Pierce Arrow, Rolls Royce, Packard, and Studebaker. Their lavish hood ornaments gleamed in the sunlight, and beneath the fine dust, she could tell their chrome was as beautiful as the day they rolled off the line. The names of the cars didn't sound familiar to her anymore, but it didn't matter. She loved them immediately.

Her fingers trailed reverently over a winged seraph standing proudly on top of the Packard's radiator. "I feel like I'm overusing the word 'amazing'," she apologized, "but each time I think I've seen the best thing out here, you show me something even better." She craned her neck to see over the cars. There were more cars behind them. "Do you mind if I scoot back there and look at those?"

"Oh no, make yourself at home," he said. "I wish more people could see the cars. I used to take them to shows, but I can't get them out of my yard anymore."

Daisy squeezed between fenders and made her way back towards the back wall where cars sat under dusty canvas covers. She lifted the corners of each, one after another. The first was a cherry red Mustang, another a blue Javelin with white racing stripes, then a wood-paneled van. The heat was terrible in the back of the barn away from the open door, and she brushed at the sweat running down her face. There were three cars left, and she moved quickly,

The next canvas revealed an anomaly. All the cars so far had been pristine, if dusty, but the fender of this one was dented with faded red paint. Giving the canvas another tug, it slipped onto the ground.

She reached out to steady herself, her hand flat against the roof of the little red race car. It was beat up, rusty, and plastered with peeling stickers with the number _31_ on the side in cracked, white paint. And yet something about this car made her heart feel as though it might burst from her chest at any moment. The feeling of deja vu was so powerful, it made her eyes swim with tears.

"Daisy, you okay?" called Art.

"I...," she whispered, hoarsely, standing there with her thoughts scattered and her eyes glued to the car.

He laughed when he found her. "You know, I plum forgot this was back here," he mused, from across its hood. "This here's the most famous car in this whole shed. Say, Daisy, are you alright? I thought maybe you'd tripped on my mess."

Daisy looked over at him and shook her head. He was going to think she'd gone crazy. "I think I oughta explain," she said. "Even though I can't remember anything about the last twenty-five years or so, sometimes there are things that...well...I guess the best way to say it is that my heart recognizes things sometimes, even though I don't remember anything about them." She smoothed her hand across the faded paint. "There's something about this car..."

Art patted the hood. "Like I said, Daisy. This here's the most famous car I've got. She won the Choctaw County 500 on her first run and then the Chattanooga White Lightning Series in 1970, 1972, and 1973, and the Georgia state title in 1972."

"You must be one heck of a driver," she told him, trying to rein in her feelings. Could it be that she was remembering the car for itself? A point of pride for Hazzard County having won so many races? She had been so sure it was something more personal.

"Oh no!" he told her. "It wasn't me driving. This was Enos' race car. Why, when he and his dad, Otis, bought it from me back in 67, the motor had seized up and, if I recall, there was a family of angry squirrels living in the backseat. They worked like the dickens for six months putting her back together."

"Enos...," the name sounded strange on her lips, but she recognized the name from Christmas. "Uncle Jesse mentioned him once. Said he used to be a deputy here in Hazzard." Art's face fell and he looked so confused that she thought there might be something wrong with the old man. "Mr. Sills, are you okay?"

He gave her an uneasy smile. "I'm fine, Daisy," he said, but continued to study her for a moment before shaking his head. "I'm sorry, I know if ain't my place to pry into your business, it's just that I can't feature you forgetting Enos. You two were thicker than thieves growing up. That boy thought you hung the moon and stars, I reckon."

His words made her palms sweaty and she wiped them off against her jeans. "Would you tell me about him?" The words were out of her mouth before she could think. "What you can, anyway?"

"I don't know much more than what anyone else could tell you."

"That's okay, just...tell me what you can?" She felt like she might be sick soon, but she wasn't sure it was the heat or nerves. "Uncle Jesse and the boys don't tell me a lot about my past. They're worried it'll confuse me, but I'm finding it's worse not to know."

"I 'spose it's your business what you want to hear," he allowed. "Let's get out of this heat first, though." She covered the car with its canvas, then followed him back through the maze out into the yard. "The Strates lived up yonder a piece," he began, as they walked back towards the house, "about half a mile. His mother's still there, I reckon, although I don't see much of her. She's a mean old bat," he confided. "I'm not sure what would have happened to that boy after Otis died if your Uncle Jesse hadn't taken him in. His mother took off out west and left him to get chased by the orphans' home."

"So, he lived with us Dukes?"

"For a year or two, until he went to the Police Academy down in Atlanta. He'd make it back up every now and then, but after his mother left, he had to spend the weekends racing to earn money to pay the mortgage on the homeplace."

"And we were close, me and him?"

He shrugged. "You never came up here," he said. "So I only know from the times I came to visit your uncle, but he mentioned once or twice that the two of you were putting gray in his beard. I gathered the pair of you were prone to mischief, but you were just kids then." He shrugged. "I don't get out to town much, or Jesse's since they stopped running shine, so that's pretty much all I know."

"Well, it's more than I knew before. I'm awfully glad I asked." She looked up at the sky where the sun was bearing down directly overhead. The sculptures behind her shimmered in the heat. "I guess I oughta be getting home, it's coming on dinner time pretty soon." She gave him a quick hug. "Thank you so much for showing me around, Art."

"It was my pleasure, Daisy. You come back anytime," he said, opening the back door into the kitchen for her. "I'll see you out."

She drove slowly down Cedar Point, thinking over all that Mr. Sills had said about Enos Strate, and as she turned onto Mill Creek Road, just shy of the Duke farm, she reminded herself to write everything down in her journal just as soon as she got home.

But it was a long time before she thought of Art Sills or Enos again.


	12. Last Watch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunset and evening star,  
> And one clear call for me!  
> And may there be no moaning of the bar,  
> When I put out to sea,
> 
> But such a tide as moving seems asleep,  
> Too full for sound and foam,  
> When that which drew from out the boundless deep  
> Turns again home...  
> ~Alfred Lord Tennyson

Daisy ran into the house, feeling truly happy for the first time since she had come home from the hospital. The world, for all the heat of Georgia's spring, was beautiful and her visit with Art had brought so much more than a good story for the Hazzard Gazette.

She wouldn't ask her family about Enos. Art had said they had been close when they were kids, but playing hide and seek with someone didn't make them an integral part of your future. She was a little miffed to discover he had lived with them; she supposed that explained why he had been included in the Duke Christmas exchange. Being teenagers, they probably had little to do with each other except around the dinner table.

All the new information would get added to the list in her journal, along with the car which had given her such a jolt to find, resting beneath its dusty canvas cover. If her family thought telling her about the past would hurt her, then she would just divine out for herself who Daisy Mae Duke had been. Maybe then she would know where she was going.

 _You can't have a future without a past,_ she told herself. It sounded like solid advice, like something Uncle Jesse might say during one of his 'sit down and let me explain something to you' moments.

Speaking of which, Uncle Jesse was probably wondering what had kept her so long. The clock had already passed 1:00pm, and Bo and Luke were out at Cooter's. She had no doubt that her uncle would put off lunch until someone reminded him to eat. There was no clean plate in the dish drainer beside the sink, and the bread still sat in the same place she had put it this morning after making toast.

"Uncle Jesse?" she called towards the back of the house. "Uncle Jesse, I'm home!"

She walked back to the living room and stood looking around at the empty room before she remembered that the new belt for the tractor had come in the mail, and that Uncle Jesse had mentioned putting it on today before she left to visit Art.

Going back to the kitchen, she took a glass from the cabinet and filled it with cold water, intent on coaxing him to come in and make her cousins put the stupid belt on the tractor themselves. The little suction cup thermometer in the window read 96 degrees, and her uncle was too old to go doing that kind of work in a hot barn all alone.

It still surprised her to see his white hair instead of the dark brown she more vividly remembered, but since Christmas he had begun to noticeably slow down. Her cousins didn't seem to pay attention to his physical condition, but she had begun taking his elbow as he walked up the steps, afraid he would trip and fall.

Outside, she stopped beside the truck and looked up at the sky. The wind had risen and dark clouds now spread above the hills to the north, moving quickly towards the farm. Although the sun still shone, the smell of rain hung thick and heavy in the air that blew down from the mountains.

The large sliding door at the end of the barn was closed, so she went around to the other side. The back door had been propped open with a log to help with airflow, but she could feel the heat coming out like an open oven door into the shade behind the barn.

Stepping over the threshold, she crossed the dusty, haw-strewn floor to the far end where a work light hung over the tractor. The new belt lay on the floor beside an upturned bucket, but she didn't see her uncle. Above her, the wind rattled the tin roof and the barn grew dark as the first stray drops of rain spattered against the hot metal.

"Uncle Jesse?"

A quiet groan rose from the far corner beneath the hay loft, and the glass of water dropped from her hands to shatter against the ground.

"Uncle Jesse? Is that you? Are you alright?"

Not knowing what to think, she struck out blindly in the musky darkness, sweat stinging her eyes. She shuffled her way around a haybale and nearly tripped on a chain which told her she was near Maudeen's stall, but the mule was out in the pasture today and not in the explosive heat of the barn.

Her hands felt for the wood planks of the stall door and she inched her way around to where she had heard the sound, stopping when her foot touched something unyielding. She knelt down and reached out, her heart slamming against her ribs.

He was drenched in sweat, and her hands shook helplessly as she felt his face, then his neck to feel for a pulse. It was fast and thready beneath her fingers, not a sure and steady _thump thump_.

"Uncle Jesse!" She shook him, hoping he would wake as the sky opened above them and the rain beat down upon the roof. "Uncle Jesse, please! Please wake up! Oh God, _please_..."

She wiped the tears out of her eyes and left him, running out of the barn and into the downpour. Her foot caught the edge of the top step to the porch and she fell against the screen door, smacking it open before falling in a heap. She pulled herself up and into the kitchen, grabbing the phone and dialing the only person she knew to call.

 _"Hazzard County, this is Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane speaking_."

"Ros..Rosco? Rosco, this...this is Daisy. Daisy Duke?" There was a pause and her first panicked thought was that he wouldn't remember her, like she had forgotten so many people.

When he spoke again, the bravado was gone. _"Daisy, is there something wrong?'_

"Rosco, Uncle Jesse's in the barn and he won't wake up and I...I don't know what t-to do!" She thought she heard the sound of a chair falling somewhere on the other end, and her legs began to shake with nerves. "P-please, Rosco, I d-don't know what to do!"

_"Aren't Bo and Luke there?"_

"N-no, they're at Cooter's!"

 _"Alright, just...just sit tight,"_ he told her. _"I'll call Doc Appleby and the ambulance and your cousins. You just.. wait there."_

He wanted her to just wait? "But, I have to do _something_!" she screamed into the phone. "Tell me what to do!"

 _"I-I'm not sure what you should do, Daisy,"_ he answered. _"Stay with him until the ambulance comes. I'll be there as fast as I can."_

She dropped the phone back into the cradle and sank to her knees against the cool linoleum of the kitchen, feeling shaky and sick. With numb fascination, she watched as a gust of cool, damp air blew through the open door and scattered a stack of napkins off the table, sending them fluttering down like white doves caught in a hurricane.

Outside, the last of the heating storm was playing out and she closed her eyes, the afterimage of the open door dancing behind her lids.

She picked herself up and ran back out to the barn, but as she stepped inside, something held her back from Maudeen's stall. If only Rosco or Bo or Luke were here! She felt little and scared, like a child being chased by monsters on her way to bed or conjuring dark shadows in her closet.

There were dark shadows in this barn, now - the darkest ones she had ever faced. The birds were beginning to sing again, and the sun was just peeking through the clouds, but here - _here_ she was all alone and, for a long moment, she wondered what would happen if she simply ran away.

* * *

The white metal and flashing strobes of the ambulance were a stark contrast against the faded barn with its soft shadows and dewy eaves. Rosco hadn't said much since arriving, other than to tell her he couldn't raise Bo or Luke on the CB. Cletus was out looking for them, but relying on the witless deputy didn't make her feel any better.

Her self incrimination over leaving her uncle alone was second only to her ire over her cousins gallivanting off to who knew where and not answering their radio.

Earl and the paramedic rushed the stretcher past herself and Rosco as she watched, transfixed. Sometime between coming home and standing here outside the barn, reality had become disjointed and unreliable. The world was a movie on a screen, and she was playing the part of an adult she didn't remember becoming.

They loaded her uncle into the ambulance, and then it was gone, speeding on its way to Capital City.

She turned to Rosco, unaware she had been clinging to his arm since he had arrived. "Oh Rosco, I shouldn't have left today," she murmured, her voice flat, dazed. "I should've been here."

Rosco pulled his arm from her grip and put it around her shoulders in a stiff hug. "Now, Daisy, it ain't your fault," he told her. "Things just...happen." He dropped his arm. "Come on, I'll drive you to the hospital."

* * *

"You look tired."

Rosco raised his head and rubbed his eyes. "These waiting rooms," he explained, "they give me a quiver in my liver. Ever since..."

"The boys said you stayed, after you brought me in that day...from the pond. I don't remember if I thanked you, or not. You didn't have to do that." He didn't have to be here now, either, but she was grateful for his company.

His eyes met hers. "You thanked me." He worked the brim of his hat between his fingers and sighed. "I wouldn't worry too much, Daisy. Your Uncle Jesse's a tough old goat."

She couldn't help but smile at his characterization. "I'm sorry about dragging you into this."

They both shot out of their seats as Bo and Luke rushed into the waiting room.

"You two Dukes," started Rosco, "I oughta... Where in tarnation were you?"

"Sorry, Rosco! We were out by the old Quarry, and there ain't no radio signals out yonder." Luke turned to Daisy. "What happened? How is he?"

Daisy shook her head, as Bo put his arms around her. "I don't know, " she told them. "No ones been out to talk to us, yet. He was out in that hot barn, fixing that stupid tractor that _you_ should have fixed the other day," she jabbed her finger at Luke. "The paramedic said it looked like he'd hit his head on something, but he didn't know if that was before or after he'd passed out from the heat."

Luke had the grace to look stunned, but it was Bo who answered her. "But...we told him not to bother with the tractor! We were gonna get it done this afternoon, after it got cooler."

"Well, Uncle Jesse didn't get your message," she snapped. An uneasy silence descended on the three cousins until Daisy realized how she must sound. "Listen fellas, I'm sorry. It ain't your fault. I mean, I was gone, too. I just don't know what to do."

Luke put his arm around her, and she lay her head against his shoulder. "None of us do, Daisy."

"I reckon we'd best make ourselves comfortable," said Bo. "Nothin much moves fast in a hospital, unless they transfer him to Grady."

Luke, usually the clearer headed of the two, nodded his agreement. "Chances are he just overdid it and passed out from the heat, and in that case they'd just keep him here."

The metal door into the patient area opened and Dr. Abbleby came out, looking as old and tired as Daisy had ever seen him. "Luke, Bo, Daisy," he said, motioning to them. "Come on back with me."

* * *

**_Wednesday, April 20th, 1988_ **

The Chicago streets were clogged with traffic and Enos was thinking of Los Angeles, though at present the City of Angels was on his mind for a different reason than its never ending stream of lights and concrete jungles. The memory of a tattooed hand and a .357 had wormed its way into his mind on the long trip from upstate Michigan to Chicago.

He had spoken with Ms. Spione, or rather he had _attempted_ speaking with her. Her English was passable enough to order pizza, but lacked something when trying to describe her son's checkered past.

 _"He is good boy,"_ she had insisted. _"Bad friends in...in...in jail, but he is good boy."_

Startled, Enos realized that no one had informed her of his death, probably because his name had not been released to the media pending the investigation. Informing families that their loved one would not be coming home was one part of police work that never got easier, even at Central Division at the LAPD where it seemed to be an almost daily occurrence. Maria Spione crossed herself and whispered something with a shine of tears in her eyes, and he got the feeling that the news had not come as any great shock.

Between pictures and gestures and simple broken English, Enos discovered the victim had grown up in a town called Patvarc, on the border between Hungary and Russia. He had sent his mother letters from the prison in Balassagyarmat, and although they were written in Hungarian, she had handed them over to Enos without him even asking. She had given him pictures of Gino at different ages, along with a picture taken aboard the Elcid Barrett with four other crew members, one of whom had recently met his demise by drinking anti-freeze.

It had been forty-five minutes since he had left Ms. Spione's high rise apartment in Roger's Park, and he had traveled all of five miles total. Traffic was being funneled down to one lane on Highway 41 due to construction and he was seriously contemplating flipping on his lights and sirens and riding down the shoulder. A check of his watch reminded him that he had missed breakfast and lunch and at 3:35pm, time was fast encroaching on missing supper as well.

He pulled into the lot at the Illinois State Police Forensic Science Lab with only five minutes to spare before his appointment. Grabbing the manila envelope out of the passenger's seat, he locked the truck and hurried inside. The smell of the building reminded him of the Police Academy in Atlanta. Undertones of gun powder and formaldehyde lingered in the otherwise spotless foyer as he stepped up to the desk where a receptionist smiled at him.

"Hi ma'am, I'm Sheriff Enos Strate from Whitefish County, Michigan. I've got an appointment with Mr. Douglas at 4:00."

"Sheriff! I've been waiting for you," she said, with a hint of worry in her tone. "Your dispatch called earlier and left an urgent message for you to call before you go back."

A sourness settled into his stomach remembering the last urgent phone call he had received on a quiet October evening last year. If he never had another phone call like that again, it would be too soon.

"Possum on a gumbush! Wonder what could be so important?"

He ran through a list of possibles in his head and came up empty. Nothing much riled Joy. If there was a crime, Doc Fletcher was on perpetual standby, and there was nothing that he or Bruce Yergen couldn't handle between the two of them. The Elcid Barrett murders were on a slow track with the ship out of port. There were only three people from his former life who knew how to get in touch with him: Turk, Uncle Jesse, and Rosco, and none of them would be calling to shoot the breeze.

"Sorry, she didn't say more than that," the receptionist told him. "You okay? You look a little pale."

"Yeah, I'm fine. I was just thinking." He took a deep breath and shoved Hazzard out of his mind. "Can I call from here after I meet with Mr. Douglas? I don't wanna keep him waiting on me."

"Absolutely, Sheriff. I'll let him know you're here."

* * *

**_Friday, April 22, 1988_ **

It seemed fitting that it would be raining.

It pounded against the canopy above them and on the cars parked in a long procession on the winding path. Rivulets ran off the edges of the canvas, muddying the loose ground strewn about. Next spring, grass would cover the ugly, rutted dirt, and a year after that lichens and moss would settle in. Someday, this spot would be forgotten like all the others; like the broken slabs leaned up against the back fence.

_"... will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away..."_

Bo was crying again. She could feel his breathing hitch where his shoulder touched her own, made all the worse for him trying to hide it. To her left, Luke was sitting straight as a arrow, but she knew if she could see his eyes, they would be filled a horrible pain that lashed out and burnt anyone close enough to try and care.

_"...a life, well lived and well loved. And through it all, a steadfastness to what was right and decent and..."_

And her own pain was there, just behind her eyes and in the tightness of her throat. She had shed plenty of tears, but the loss that cut the deepest was that which no one would ever understand - the twenty years of love, advice, and laughter that she had lost and could never retrieve.

" _...that we will meet once again in the sweet by and by..._ "

Behind her sat a sea of faces she didn't know, and she was glad for the rain that drowned out any sounds of their grief. Many had come up to her at the wake with tears in their eyes, each with a story they needed to tell, waiting expectantly for her to remember whatever it was they were talking about. It wasn't her they needed, but the Daisy she couldn't remember. She was one who would have known what to say to make it all better, but that Daisy had died in Crockett's Pond.

" _... touched our lives and made them better, and though we will miss Jesse Duke, we will never forget him. He lives on in..._ "

Things would change now. Life would go on...and on. She saw the lonely years stretch out in front of her. Her cousins would move on; find someone to share their futures with, marry and raise families. Their lives were compete, full of years and memories and stories.

Her own life was a dried and empty husk, like the milkweeds after their seeds had scattered.

Empty.

Orphaned.

Alone.


	13. Across the Broken Miles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 13: Across the Broken Miles
> 
> "It's been a long dark night  
> And I've been a waitin' for the morning  
> It's been a long hard fight  
> But I see a brand new day a dawning..."  
> Light of a Clear Blue Morning - feat. The Wailin Jenny's

* * *

**April 21, 1988, Earlier**

_The fields lay out below him like a quilt of interlocking parallelograms, sewn in brown and green. The land was alive, but he was in that dead space in the middle, neither on Earth nor up in Heaven and to think that only three days ago Uncle Jesse had still been -_

Stop _._

_Or that three years ago-_

_No. Not that, either._

_The message Joy had passed on to him in Chicago had been to call 'someone named Rosco' as soon as possible, and the ensuing call had routed him to O'Hare instead of home. He had changed into civilian clothes from his go-bag in a restroom of the TWA terminal, then sat for the next six hours staring out at the planes shuttling back and forth on the tarmac, trying not to think about where he was going and why._

_He leaned his head against the window and looked towards the horizon and the early morning haze where Cincinnati rose like a scab from the farmland. The aspirin he'd bought at the kiosk while he waited for the flight to Atlanta had worn off by the time he boarded, and his head throbbed dully from holding back his grief, but this wasn't the time to let it go._

* * *

The graveside service was crowded with the the many lives Jesse Duke had touched over the years. Enos supposed it was a beautiful service, despite the rain, if any funeral could truly be called beautiful. Maybe for one whose suffering had ended; their time-ravaged, earthly body exchanged for a more comfortable, eternal existence.

He wouldn't know. Nearly everyone he had cared about had died violently and before their time. He was still a child when his Aunt Mary had been beaten to death and thrown into the Chattahoochee for having the audacity to run off with a revenuer. His father, who had died in a still explosion when Enos was fifteen, remained the latest of a list that spanned generations of the Strate family.

At least Uncle Jesse's passing had been peaceful, or so Rosco had assured him.

He stood at the back of the crowd, hearing only bits and pieces of what the preacher was saying and feeling, for the first time in his life, like an outsider. Three years had passed since he had called Hazzard home, and life had gone on without him. Now, minus Daisy and Uncle Jesse, there was little reason to ever return to Georgia.

During his time in Los Angeles, he had left his heart in Hazzard County, and he never thought anywhere could take its place. Not until he had walked across a frozen lake with the night sky full of green fire above him and stood in a snowy forest so quiet it shut out even his own thoughts. He had wandered into the North and discovered that magic still existed - as dangerous as it was beautiful, woven by the hand of Almighty God.

 _I've fallen in love with it,_ he realized. The idea hit him blindsided. There would always be a pain in his heart for his past that nothing but time would soothe, but if there was ever a place to start over, it would be there, not here.

After a last prayer the crowd began to shuffle away, heading back to their separate lives. He waited, hoping he could catch Bo and Luke without Daisy nearby.

"Enos?" He turned and looked down to find Ms. Tizdale, Hazzard's indomitable postmistress and good-natured busybody. "I thought that was you." She gave him a once over with a critical eye. "Not feedin' you enough up there in Michigan, I reckon. You're lookin a little scrawny."

How she knew where he lived, he hadn't a clue, but it didn't surprise him. "Hey Ms. Tizdale, it's good to see you, too. I guess I've been awful busy lately, not much time to eat."

She considered his excuse and nodded. "It's so terrible, what with sweet Jesse passing. I know you were close to him after poor Otis died, God rest his soul," she lamented, raising her eyes heavenward and he saw that there were tears in them. "I expect you'll be staying on at the farm for a few days?"

"Oh, no ma'am, I can't," he said. He could only imagine the fallout from that experience. "I've got two murders that ain't been solved, and I'll have to burn the midnight oil to figure them out." It was only half a lie.

The petite woman raised an eyebrow at him. "I expect it's more about not wantin' to see Daisy," she said, not buying his reason. "I heard she don't remember you, anymore. I'm awful sorry about that, too."

"There's no fooling you, is there, Ms. Tizdale?" he sighed, resigned. "Anyhow, my flight from Atlanta leaves at 9:15 this evening. I was hoping to catch Bo and Luke before I left."

She turned around, craning her head to search for them then turned back and patted his hand. "You wait here, Enos," she told him, and left him standing alone.

The stragglers were leaving now that the rain had played itself out. He saw Ms. Tizdale take Daisy's arm and gently lead her away from the gravesite to the passenger side of her taxi cab. She opened the door and climbed inside.

"Well, I'll be ding-danged," he whispered to himself. "Good ole' Ms. Tizdale! That woman's got a heart of gold and the mind of a sharp tack."

Enos brushed past a couple speaking to each other and made his way over to where Bo and Luke were trying valiantly to look like they weren't falling apart at the seams. He'd known them long enough to know better. Bo grabbed him in a bone-crushing hug, and others around them drifted respectfully away. Finally, he let him go, swiping at eyes red from grief and gave him a sad smile.

"Hey Enos," said Luke, somberly, giving him a hug as well. "Rosco said he got through to you. We was worried you might not be able to get away."

"I made time," he answered, "but I've got a flight leaving Atlanta in less than five hours."

Bo looked ready to object, but Luke beat him to it. "Now Enos, there was a time when you were nearly as close to Uncle Jesse as we were," he reminded him. "You've gotta at least stay the night at the farm."

"Luke's right, Enos," added Bo, "Why, it wouldn't be right not to, everybody knows you're practically a Duke!"

Enos shook his head. "Not everybody," he reminded him, dismally. "Thanks for the offer, fellas. I'm much obliged, but you know it'd be awkward for me to stay there, and I'm not just thinking of myself."

How long would it take for one of them to blurt out the past? He knew the boys like they were his own cousins, and Bo was especially good at putting his foot in his mouth. He could hear him now: _Gosh, Daisy, we all thought Enos was your fiance until you ran off and married someone else_.

Best not push his luck.

"So that's it?" countered Bo. "You ain't even gonna try to get to know her? Now, more than ever, she needs all the friends she can get. Heck, we _all_ need you."

That hurt more than he expected. "You guys know I love you like you're my own flesh and blood, but...I can't face her as a stranger again," he insisted. "If she remembers me on her own then-"

"That ain't fair, Enos! Why...that's like tellin' somebody they ain't got a brother or something!"

Luke nudged his younger cousin. "Leave it, Bo. It ain't our business."

"I'm sorry, Bo. I just...I can't deal with that right now. Maybe someday."

"Yeah, well, Uncle Jesse used to say that 'Someday' ain't one of the seven days of the week."

Enos could hear Uncle Jesse chastising him, but wild horses wouldn't drag him to the farm tonight. "Yeah, I know he did." He nodded towards the little car parked along the road. "Listen, I'm sorry to leave you guys like this, but gotta get the rental back before I take off."

The cousins looked out towards the road where the only vehicles remaining were the a City of Hazzard work truck, the General Lee, and a red Caprice.

"We know how hard it must've been on you, Enos," Luke sighed, "and you oughta know that we never blamed you for leaving. We still don't. You'll call us if you're ever back in Hazzard?"

He had no plans of returning. "That's a promise, Luke."

Together, the three of them walked to their vehicles and, after a last round of goodbyes, drove away in opposite directions. The sound of the Dodge Charger's 440 lingered in his heart long after the car had disappeared into the hills.

Fifteen minutes later, Enos circled back around and parked beside the canopy. There was a freshness in the air after the rain, but soon enough the sun would come out and bake the puddles into steam. Frank and Milton, the two hands who worked in the county cemeteries, were preparing the coffin to be lowered. He waved and called out to them.

"Hey, Enos! I thought I saw you here today," said Milton. "Forget somethin'?"

He gathered his courage. "I was wondering...I wasn't able to make it to the service at the church or the wake for the viewing. Would you guys mind if I was able to see him?"

The two workers glanced at each other and Frank shrugged. "Don't see why not, Enos. Hell, I remember how close you were to the Dukes growing up. I'm awful sorry about...," he nodded towards the coffin. "I tell you what, we ain't had lunch, yet. Why don't we take a break, and we'll give you some time."

"Thanks fellas," he said. "That's mighty kind of you."

"Ain't a problem," Milton assured. "There's a latch here-" He felt around the side and unclasped the lid. "Just relatch it when you leave, if you would."

He nodded his thanks as the two men leaned their shovels up against the canopy's supports and headed towards their county work truck. He waited until the dust from their wheels was gone before opening the lid. From across the road, a gust of wind blew through the pines with a soft whistle, rising and falling as it moved through the branches. It sounded like mourning.

He stared down at the body for a long time. It didn't seem right for Jesse Duke to be in a suit, and his first crazy thought was that they should have laid him to rest in his faded overalls and red hat. Knowing the man, he'd probably agree.

The reality of it came to him all at once - seeing Uncle Jesse still and cold with the waxy sheen of makeup covering the unnatural skin tones, a shell of the man he had loved and respected. On the opposite side of the casket was the grave of Lavinia Duke who had taken him in and mothered him when it had been too much trouble for his own.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Jesse," he murmured. "I'm so sorry..."

He hung his head and sobbed, not just for Jesse and Lavinia, but for his own father who had been there one minute and seemingly gone the next. The Dukes, and Daisy especially, had been the ones to lead him out of the depression he had suffered with afterwards. There hadn't been a viewing for Otis Strate - there had been nothing left to view. Just a body bag and a cracked watch with its hands stuck forever at 1:17 am.

* * *

**Monday, April 25th**

It was too quiet inside.

Daisy made herself a ham sandwich knowing she wouldn't eat it, and headed outside. The creak of the screen door sounded harsh and shrill, overly loud in the stillness that had infected the farm since the funeral. The hours seemed to pass incredibly slow, and she tried to fill them however she could. She had cleaned the kitchen and bathroom so many times her hands were red and cracked from bleach.

This morning, Bo had disappeared off towards the back forty with an ax as soon as it was light. Now and again, she would hear the sound of chopping drifting on the wind. She hadn't seen Luke since the night before, but she had heard his steps in the hallway in the wee hours of the morning and knew, at least, that he was home.

They were all avoiding each other because none of them knew what to say to make it better and understanding that the same anguished look stared out from their own eyes. Beneath it all ran the fear of things that had to be done, those tasks that meant facing the reality that Uncle Jesse was gone, but no one could bear to open his bedroom door. Better to walk around like ghosts imagining that he was in there sleeping.

It was too real, yet. Too raw.

They needed someone like Aunt Lavinia to come in and set them down and tell them that she would take care of everything. Daisy didn't know who would be close enough to their family to ask to help with something so personal. Plenty of people had stopped by to drop off food and had asked if there was anything she needed, but something in their faces told her that they were hoping she would say no, and so she did.

The planks of the old porch creaked beneath her as she carried her lunch out into the yard. She wandered over to Bonnie May and tore off a hunk of sandwich for the goat before she took a bite herself. It turned her stomach and she threw the rest out into the field for the crows and coons.

Following the dusty footpath around the barn, she walked aimlessly towards the shed wondering if Molly, the old, piebald, calico cat that hung around, might have had kittens again. Then she remembered that Molly had been there when she was little and the cat was probably twenty years dead, if not more, and that started her tears again.

And so the time passed.

When she got back to the house, Luke was sitting on the steps to the porch. His expression seemed distant and deep in thought as he stared at some indefinable point across the field, and he didn't notice her until she sat down beside him. He turned towards her, but said nothing. He looked wrung out, but she was sure she did, too.

"Hey."

"Hi Daisy." He attempted a smile and failed. "You up for a walk?"

"Sure."

He pushed himself off the step then offered her his hand to pull her up. As they walked down the road, she stared at the hardpack beneath her sandals and Luke's rundown boots as pillows of dust stirred with their steps.

"Just say what you were gonna say, already."

He shot her a pained glance and she realized she had spoken the words aloud. "Sorry, Luke. Was there something you wanted to talk about?"

He stopped and looked up at the sky as if searching for rain though there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and ran his hand through his hair. "Before Uncle Jesse, I was...well, what I'm trying to say is that... Do you know anything about the Georgia Fire Academy down in Forsythe?"

"Fire Academy?"

"It's like Police Academy...sort of, except to be a firefighter. Anyway, I mentioned to you and Uncle Jesse that I'd been thinking about it, just before you...your accident last fall, and both of you hounded me until I sent in an application."

She grinned at him. "Good for us."

"Yeah well," he pulled a folded paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "I got an answer."

He turned away as she unfolded the letter and read it. "Luke, this says here that you've been accepted!" She tugged on his shoulder until he looked at her. "This is great!"

"How is it great, Daisy?" he argued. "Uncle Jesse ain't been in the ground a week. I can't go off and leave you and Bo right now. "

"Oh, no you don't, Luke Duke!" she fumed, putting her hands on her hips. "Now, you listen to me. There ain't been much good happen to us Dukes in a month of Sundays, and I'm not about to stand here and watch you turn this down!" She held the up letter. "You've got a chance to do something big that you love, and I'm not gonna stand here and watch you throw it away."

His laugh was rusty and out of practice, but it touched his eyes and softened them. "You sound like your old self, you know. Just as stubborn and pig-headed. But, it's an eight week course, down south of Atlanta," he told her, "and afterwards, I don't know if I'd be coming back home. Ain't much call for a new firefighter in Hazzard and that's volunteer, anyway."

She tried to ignore the way his comment about her 'old self' made her heart ache. "Oh Luke, one of us chasin' their dreams is just what this family needs! We should tell Bo," she said, turning around to walk back home.

Luke caught her shoulder and pulled her back. "Now, hold on just a minute," he complained. "I ain't even had time to think about it. Give me till the end of next week."

"Alright, but you'll regret it if you don't do it."

"Not a word about it. To _anyone_." He spat in his hand and held it out to her.

She spat in her own and shook on it. "Not a word."


	14. Resolutions

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: So, lots of sadness in the past few chapters. Stick with me, every cloud has a silver lining...after the storm is over. ;)
> 
> Chapter 14: Resolutions
> 
> Across the broken miles I'll fly  
> with hope in my wings,  
> a prayer on my lips,  
> and a heart which sings  
> to find your footprints in the sand.  
> -the author

The seagulls were restless in the morning sun. Enos could see them from behind his bedroom window, careening on the wind and soaring and diving down to the surf. The bright light made his eyes water, and the muscles along his shoulders and down his back ached; a consequence of sitting at his desk at the station until 3:00am trying to organize the notes surrounding the county's two unsolved murders.

He fell back onto the bed and looked up at the knotholes in the paneled ceiling. When he was little, his mind would have turned them into the eyes of monsters staring down at him, and he wouldn't have been able to sleep after imagining their teeth, sharp as needles, gleaming in the moonlight.

It was mornings like these he wondered where all the years had gone.

He ground the sleep out of his eyes and pulled himself up to get dressed. The past was gone, and it was time to put it behind him. If he needed a distraction, it was waiting for him in the cardboard banker's box in the storage room of the station. There had been no easy answers in Chicago - only more questions, but those had taken second fiddle to Uncle Jesse and the funeral. It was time to get to work and prove there was more to Enos Strate than a bumbling country deputy or a target for gang bullets.

* * *

Luke had called a family meeting and, while Daisy knew what it must be about, she still found it difficult to meet his eyes. The sounds of the night drifted in through the screen door; cicadas and spring peepers making the silence between the three of them less heavy. June bugs banged against the window, attracted by the light.

It didn't seem right, gathered around the table without their Uncle Jesse. Daisy smoothed her hand across the faded checks of the tablecloth, wishing she could have just one day back - one more memory of being together. Though the shock of losing her Aunt Lavinia had softened since last fall, her loss seemed to grow harder now with their uncle gone. She knew that whatever Luke's decision was, it would separate the three of them. Either he would be leaving them to make his own way in the world, or he would stay and resent the fact that he couldn't follow his dreams. She desperately hoped for the former, no matter how difficult losing him would be.

"I guess y'all are wondering what it is I wanted to talk to you about," Luke began, setting aside the folded piece of paper he had been holding.

"I wish you'd just say it, Luke," muttered Bo, "instead of beating around the bush. You've got me more worried than a grub worm in a chicken coop."

"Yeah, well, the fact is, there ain't no easy way to say what I need to talk about."

Daisy thought if he took anymore time, she'd tell Bo herself. "Just start at the beginning."

Luke sighed and tried again. "Back last fall, before Daisy had her accident, I mentioned to Uncle Jesse how I wouldn't mind going down to the Firefighter Academy down in Forsythe."

"Firefighter Academy?" Bo sat up straighter. "Wait a minute, I thought this was about...well, just nevermind."

"Uncle Jesse and Daisy, though she don't remember it, convinced me to send in an application. I plum forgot about it since then, what with all that's happened. Plus, I reckon I never expected to get a response anyway." He ran his hand nervously through his hair. "I got a letter week before last." He unfolded the paper and lay it on the table, smoothing out the creases. "I got accepted."

Bo looked confused. "Say, that's great, Luke!" he beamed. "Don't know why you were so worried to tell us. Shoot, Hazzard could probably use someone that actually knows what they're doin'. Ever since Amos retired, we ain't had nothing but a volunteer bucket brigade."

Daisy shot a glance between the two of them, waiting, her palms sweaty. Here would be the impasse, when Bo realized that this meant they would be losing Luke.

"It ain't like that, Bo," cautioned Luke, in a tone that he usually saved for softening bad news. "It ain't just a class, it's a school, and after that I don't know where I'll end up. Boss had to pay Amos, being fire chief and all, but that was back before he retired. Everyone's volunteer. You know Rosco ain't gonna pay me."

Bo's chair scraped against the floor as the realization hit him like a 2x4. "You don't mean you'd be leavin'!? I can't believe you'd-"

"Now, Bo," Daisy interrupted, "ain't nobody got a right to hold Luke back from what he wants to do, least of all us. We're family, we oughta be behind him. Uncle Jesse always said we should-."

"What d'you know, Daisy?" Bo demanded, hurt, "you don't even _remember_ half of what Uncle Jesse said! He also said we was to stick together!"

She shot up, not expecting such callous words from her younger cousin. "How dare you, Bo Duke! I oughta-"

"Stop it you two!"

She turned back to Luke, but Bo stormed away to look out the window, slamming his hands down on the sink.

"This is why I wasn't even gonna say anything, Daisy," Luke told her, gesturing towards Bo. "I can't very well keep this family together by gallivanting off to school."

Luke picked up the paper and shoved it in his pocket and was just about to walk away when Bo turned back around with tears in his eyes.

"No, stop Luke. I'm sorry." He looked over at her and shook his head. "I owe you an apology, too, Daisy. I don't think I've ever said something so dang mean in my whole life as I just did to you."

Daisy walked over and put her arms around him. "It's alright, Bo."

"Daisy's right, Luke. One thing Uncle Jesse never did was shoot down our dreams, and I reckon there was plenty of times he wanted to. Me driving in that Carnival of Thrills jump for one. It's not about you leaving to go be a firefighter. It's just..." Daisy felt his breath hitch and hugged him harder, burying her face against his shoulder "...it's just everything's changing so dang fast. I know it has to, but..."

She heard the chair and footsteps, then Luke's arms were around both of them. She knew, without seeing, that there were tears in his eyes as well as her own, as she slipped her other arm around him. Seconds stretched into a minute, then two, as they mourned together over all they had lost. No one could really understand but them, and the weeks of avoiding each other had taken their toll and prevented them from even beginning to heal.

 _It's gonna be alright,_ she thought _. Not now, but someday - because of this moment - it will all be okay._

At last, they moved apart, wiping red eyes. Bo grinned at them as they sat back down. "I guess I've got some news myself," he said, sheepishly, "though it ain't near as exciting as yours."

"News? Well, let's hear it, Bo," urged Luke. "You ain't asked Cindy Lou to marry you, I hope."

Bo shot him a disgusted scowl. "Luke, have you taken leave of your senses? I ain't asked her out since February."

"That explains why she joined a convent," Luke muttered.

"I know you two could go on like that all day," said Daisy, batting at Luke, "but I'd actually like to hear what Bo has to say."

Bo lowered his eyes, and shook his head. "Well, like I said, it ain't exciting or nothing. I've just been doing some thinking." He glanced up at Luke. "Mabel Harris asked me if I'd be interested in buying their land."

This was the first Daisy had heard on the subject, and she could tell by the look on Luke's face that he was surprised as well. Mabel was the widow of Ralph Harris, who had passed away at the ripe old age of ninety-six back in January. Their 220 acres abutted the Duke property on the north side.

"I said I'd take it."

Luke whistled. "That's a hell of a lot of land."

"I went down yesterday and signed the deed," said Bo. He held up his hand for Luke to wait. "I used part of what Uncle Jesse left me to buy it, but she practically gave it away."

Luke looked at the man as though he'd grown horns and sprouted an extra leg. "Don't know what we're gonna do with it."

"Well, as it turns out, you ain't the only one who's been thinking about the future," Bo told him. He paced the length of the table, while she and Luke shared confused glances. "I know we grew up complaining about all the chores there are to do around here, but the fact of the matter is...well..." He stopped and turned back to them. "I've decided to keep up the farm. More than that, I've decided to try my hand at some real farming."

"Farming!" Luke laughed. "Bo, the most we ever did was grow corn for making moonshine or hay for Maudeen. I don't know the first thing about farming for a livelihood, and you don't neither!"

"You're right, Luke," he admitted. "I don't right now, but there's real money in it if you've got the land. I was talking to Jake Miller down at Ruebottom's the other day. He says plenty of old-timers wouldn't mind giving me pointers to help me get started. I'd have to rent the equipment, but at least know how to run it all after those summers working in Mr. Hatcher's fields. There's still time to plant soybeans if I can get it tilled in time."

Bo's face lit up while talking about it, and his enthusiam was contagious. Daisy almost pinched herself to see if this was all some weird dream.

Luke was looking at him as though he'd never seen him before. "You're really serious about this, aren't you, cuz?"

"I really think I can do it."

"Well...alright then," said Luke, resolved. "I thought _I_ was the craziest one in this family, but I'm gonna hand that award over to you, Bo. The Academy don't start until the end of August, so me and Daisy will help you with whatever you need us to do." He grinned at her. "Right, Daisy?"

"Of course we will, sugar!"

She was happy for both of them. Really she was, but as Daisy watched Bo and Luke shake hands and laugh with each other, she wondered what kind of future would be left for her; a thirty-something who looked into the mirror every morning still surprised that she wasn't a child.

* * *

Enos felt Joy walk past, but ignored her until a fresh cup of coffee landed beside him. Papers full of notes and heavy tomes with cracked binding littered his desk. A Russian to English dictionary lay beneath them, and somewhere under it all were the pictures of Gino Spione. The book open in front of him was written in Russian, but it was the pictures he was interested in.

"Enos," she chided, "you'll run yourself to an early grave staying up every night like this."

"This case won't solve itself, Joy. Thanks for the coffee."

He groaned inwardly as she dragged a chair over and sat down across from him. She was only twenty-six, far too young to be the Sheriff Department's 'den mother', but somehow she had ended up with that distinction. He supposed being the oldest of nine siblings and married to a guy who was forty-eight made her uniquely qualified.

"Are you alright?" She narrowed her eyes at him as she looked him over. "You've been like this since you got back from Georgia two weeks ago, and I know you've been sleeping here."

"I'm fine, I just need to get these books back to the Chicago Crime lab before-" Her hand smacked down on the page in front of him, forcing his attention away from it.

"Everyone else says you don't lie, but I've figured you out," she said. "You lie by omission."

Enos rolled his eyes, realizing that he'd have to tell her something. He settled on a smidge of the truth. "I'm just realizing that I don't belong in Hazzard anymore," he told her. "that's all. I thought I'd always be able to go back and, even if things had changed, I would still...belong, I reckon. I don't know, I'm tired. Don't listen to me, I'm just rattling on about nothing."

"Is this about Jesse Duke?"

Enos had given Joy a brief account of his childhood, not the moonshining part, of course, but enough for her to understand why Uncle Jesse's death had been so hard for him.

"No," he sighed. "Not really. It's still hard to believe he's gone, but...this isn't about him." She removed her hand, and he flipped to the next page of _'Tattoos of the Russian Mafia and Their Meanings, Volume III',_ the rabbit hole down which his research had led him. Although Gino's tattoos were common with the Russian Mafia, he didn't think the man had been an official member. The eye tattoos symbolized a leader in the mafia organization, but he had been too young to be high ranking. Mostly likely he had gotten them after he came to America since they weren't in the picture of him from the prison in Hungary.

"Melinda mentioned you'd lost someone else. Someone close to you."

He glanced back up at her. "You guys are worse than a bunch of old hens at a quilting party."

"I happened to ask her if she knew what was wrong with you. She didn't give any specifics." Joy waited for a response, but he had no intention of getting into a discussion over his non-existent love life, especially not at 12:45am. "I know how to keep my mouth shut about things that hurt," she told him, softly. "If you ever want to talk about it."

He knew she meant it. After all, he had known her for two years before he found out her husband had been a mariner, and not a conservation officer, most of his life. Bruce himself had told the story while ice fishing; on a dark, cloudy day, with snow threatening to fall heavy and thick. He had been captain of the _October Sun_ , a commercial fishing tug, until a November storm had pushed it off course and over a reef just south of Thunder Bay. Before it sank, he and five crewmen managed to clamber aboard an inflatable raft in 30 foot swells and subzero temperatures. Three of the men had frozen to death in front of him before they were rescued fourteen hours later by the freighter, John Morgan.

 _Still gives me nightmares,_ he had admitted. Enos knew the feeling.

"I know I can trust you, Joy."

"Can I ask her name?"

He pictured a field of wildflowers, stretching as far as his eyes could see. "Daisy," he whispered. "Her name was Daisy." Her name seem to hang in the silence between them, and he knew by the stricken expression on Joy's face that he had given her the wrong impression. Why correct it, though? The Daisy he had known _was_ dead. Or perhaps it was _him_ who was dead to _her_.

It didn't matter anymore.

"I'm so sorry, Enos," she told him. "Is there anything else you need before I go?"

He shook his head. "Really, Joy, I'm alright. I promise I'll get some sleep in a little while. See you tomorrow."

She frowned at him, but stood and moved the seat back against the wall before grabbing her jacket from its hook. The door creaked as she pushed the bar and left him to his thoughts.

* * *

Daisy had tossed and turned for the last two hours but sleep still eluded her, even after a glass of cornbread and milk. She lay on her stomach, listening to the wind buffet the house and the limbs of the maple tree creak outside the window. She felt as though she had left something undone. It was the same gnawing feeling of having forgotten an assignment at school or your memory verse on Sunday morning, but try as she might nothing came to mind.

She rolled onto her side and stared at the clock whose phosphorescent dial read almost 1:00am. The air was humid and sticky, but the rain which had threatened to fall since evening had failed to materialize, and the box fan in the corner of her room provided little relief.

She thought about Bo's plan for farming and grinned, imagining the look on Uncle Jesse's face if he knew his youngest charge had given up his plans of NASCAR for driving a combine. She prayed it would all turn out okay. With Bo using part of his inheritance to buy the Harris' property, the Dukes now owned 280 acres, and it was daunting to think of the work needed to be done to make it pay off before the end of summer. When she was little, Mr. Harris would rent his fields to local farmers, and beans and corn would spread out like a green ocean as far as she could see. Now that was all theirs...well, it was Bo's, she supposed.

The clock read 1:10am. "Oh for goodness sake, this is ridiculous!"

She threw off the covers and got up to turn on the light. In doing so, she remembered that she had neglected to write down the things she had learned about Enos from Art Sills in her journal. Kneeling down by her bed, she felt for the notebook in its hiding spot inside her bed's box spring.

It wasn't there.

Putting her eye to the hole, she peered inside. In the dimness, she thought she saw it on the far side of her bed where it had fallen off the wooden frame and onto the fabric cover below. Reaching her arm in as far as she could, she groped blindly until her fingers touched the edge of a book. She pulled in out, only to find that it wasn't her journal.

Or maybe it _was_? After all, the cover had **_Property of Daisy Mae Duke_** scrawled across the top in blue crayon and below it:

**_Private!_ **   
**_Keep out under penalty of death_ **  
**_that means you Lukas Duke!_ **

When she came back home after the accident, everything had been taken away. The doctors had assured Uncle Jesse and the boys that it was better for her to start over, to remove the reminders of a life she could not remember. Instead of helping, it had made her feel like a stranger - not only at the farm and to her family, but to herself. The bits and pieces of information she had discovered about her past made no sense without the stories behind them.

How many times had she prayed that God would return just one memory to her? Here, in her hands, was a piece of herself; lost and found again. With trembling fingers, she opened the cover and began to read.

_**October 13, 1965**..._


	15. Embers from Ashes

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Any misspellings and incorrect grammar in the journal entries are probably intentional. According to the Reunion movie, Enos was born around 1952. Daisy is 2 years younger in my world.

_**From the Journal of Daisy Mae Duke**_ , **_October 13, 1965:_** ** _I wish you were my cousin instead of Luke! He is so mean and stupid. I HATE him! I hope Bo doesn't grow up to be as annoing as he is._** _ **I can't believe you got grounded for flunking your math test. We should have run off when we were in Tenessee and not come back and then never have to go to school again or listen to Luke be such a baby. He's just mad that he's to little to go bootlegging with Uncle Jesse.** _

Daisy shook her head over her younger self. Spats with Luke were a dime a dozen when she was little, and apparently things hadn't changed much in the time she had forgotten. It had been hard to learn to trust him after her accident, especially since she had remembered him only as an angry, self-righteous boy. Fortunately, he had mellowed into a man with a good heart and an unshakeable devotion to his family, and she had grown close to him over the winter. She suspected it had been hard to be the oldest of them, having to be responsible when Uncle Jesse wasn't around -especially with her being such a pain in the rear.

Who, she wondered, was the unidentified recipient of the journal entry? It wasn't Bo or Luke, and yet it must have been a real person and not a nebulous nobody. She didn't remember ever going to Tennessee, but then there were a lot of things which fell into that category, and she would have only been eleven in the fall of 1965.

The next four pages were filled with drawings, none of which were very good and mostly of animals around the farm; pigs with gigantic snouts, cows with purple spots, chickens that looked more like 'chicken scratch', and Maudeen the mule (one of the few constants in her life) with a jaunty Santa hat perched on her head. She flipped past them and found the next journal entry.

 **_January 1, 1966:_ ** **_Its not fair! I got Uncle Jesse's name again for Christmas next year. Bo is easy to buy for I would get him a new band for his slingshot or some cards to put in his bike but I don't ever know what to get Uncle Jesse. And I would get you that shiny silver lure you keep drooling on at Mr Rubottom's store but Luke handed me my name instead of letting me pick it out and I think he probably didn't want Uncle Jesse's name either.  
_ **

**_February 14, 1966 : You should have seen the kids in my class when they opened the valentines we wrote and snuck into thier boxes. Missy Prissy Linda Sutton cried like a baby when she got the one saying she looked like a booger.  
HA! HA! HA! HA!  
Too bad you're not still in elementary or we could have made them for your class too._ **

Stuck in front of the Valentine's Day journal page was a piece of ratty notebook paper containing a variety of mean spirited and childish insults. She felt bad for laughing at them, but she couldn't help it, and she cringed to think of all the poor kids who might have received one. The nicest read, "You stink less than most people". Based on what Art Sills had told her about she and Enos being prone to mischief, she suspected he may have been her unidentified partner in crime.

The next page was over a month later. Apparently there had been a falling out between them that spring.

**_March 21, 1966: Whatever. You're an idiot too._ **

**_June 1, 1966: It's been too a long summer with you stuck up in the hills with your mother. I don't know why you don't run away. I bet your dad would understand and then you can just live here. I can't wait until Friday. Uncle Jesse says we have to do our chores first but if your dad lets you stay Saturday then we can ask Cooter to take us to the track._ **

**_Halloween 1966: Sally Mae (she stole my middle name) broke out in hives from the green makeup she used to look like a witch for the Halloween party. You should have come. I don't know why you didn't. Amy wasn't even there and you're better to talk to than stupid Darcy Kincaid who kept following me around all night._ **

Outside the window, the wind was joined at last by the rain. The heavy drops struck the window like a scattering of bb's before the heavens opened and beat down on the tin roof. Flipping the journal upside down on the bed, she jumped up to check the window and door in the kitchen.

The rain cascaded in thundering waves that seemed to rise and fall as they passed across the house. The scent of wet earth filled the room, bringing with it the ghosts of a hundred memories and a sense of nostalgia as thick as molasses. It gave her a dazed, unearthly feeling of dreaming. Sometime in her past, on a dark night in a rainstorm long ago forgotten, she had stood here as she did now. It felt familiar.

The front door was fine, but the window over the sink had been left up and rain was splattering against the porcelain and countertop. A bolt of lightening struck in the distance as she pulled it down, casting the room into harsh color. All sounds but the rain ceased as the refrigerator compressor shut off and the nightlight in the hallway went dark. A crack of thunder shook the foundation.

On any other night, a power outage was a simple nuisance, but tonight she had a mission to read the journal she had found, and she wasn't about to be thwarted by a storm. Dragging a chair to a high cabinet by the door, she took down a heavy cardboard box and carried it into her bedroom, grabbing the box of matches from the junk drawer along the way.

She was sure there was a story behind the box of thirty, white, votive candles - all of which had been previously lit, but she hadn't bothered to ask the boys while reorganizing the kitchen. Whatever their original purpose, they would certainly come in handy tonight.

The first one gave barely enough light to see her bed, much less read by, so she lit another...and another, until the box was empty and her dresser and vanity were crowded with candles. In the cozy, welcoming glow of the firelight, she picked up the journal and continued to read.

**_February 9, 1967: Why are you so dang nice to Amy!? Oh my gosh she makes me want to puke the way she bats her stupid eyes at you and you just let her prattle on about whatever nonsense comes out of her head. I thought you didn't like her. You've griped about her ever since you were little I don't know what changed except that she has boobs now and that better not be what you're looking at. Boys are dumb.  
_ **

**_March 25, 1967: So I thought I would write this down because twenty years from now I'm going to ask Uncle Jesse what he and your dad were betting on today. That was the most boring game I've ever seen._ _Why does Pruitts Corners even have a baseball team? BTW, you've gotten taller. And I wasn't blushing at you, idiot. It was hot outside and don't think I won't get you back for sneaking up on me and scaring me. And I swear Enos, if you come over and I have to hear about that stupid race car all day I'm going to send a note to Amy saying you'll take her to the spring dance._ **

Was the race car Enos had been talking about the red one in Mr. Sills barn, she wondered? Now that the entries had shifted to an older point of view, she was finding it difficult to imagine herself as the author. How many memories must be hidden between these lines, written by a thirteen year old girl with no bigger problems than someone flirting with her best friend and watching boring baseball games. If she didn't know better, and she didn't, she might think that this younger Daisy was more than a little jealous of this Amy person.

The next page had been torn out, leaving bits of paper sticking up from between the bindings as a reminder of where it had been, and the next page began in the middle of an entry.

 **_-_ ** **_know what to say to make it better. Uncle Jesse told me you have to work it out on your own, but he doesn't know you like I do. I don't think anyone except your dad did and I just keep thinking about how you couldn't remember where you were or what day it was when Uncle Jesse brought you back to the farm. He said you were in shock, but you were so confused it scared me and then when you weren't in the guest room last night and the window was open_ _I thought you had drowned yourself in the pond. I thought you were DEAD Enos. D-E-A-D_ _. Don't you EVER EVER EVER do that to me again! I still don't know what to say to make you better.  
_ **

**_July 13, 1967: I hope your mother never comes back. I don't care if that sounds mean. You can live with us and be a Duke. Vance says that you don't know that I care about you but of course you know I do. You're my best friend. I shouldn't have to tell you that, you should already know it. I don't know why you're so mad at me just becuase I want to help you. Slamming the door in my face won't make me go away and it won't make your dad alive again. I just want everything to go back to the way it was. I miss you, you damn idiot.  
_ **

**_September 8, 1967: I can't belive you're here at the farm and you don't have to leave ever again. At least not until you start at the Academy. I'm sorry about reading that letter to you but it was worth it to see the embarrassed look on your face. Of course if you ever find out I wrote it instead of Amy you'll KILL me. But how else was I supposed to get you to quit being nice to her?_ **

She had read through to the fall of 1967 without stopping, feeling the pain that lay unspoken between her lines after his father's death. She knew Enos had come to live with them, but her own grief had not come across in Mr. Sill's telling of the story.

And what kind of a monster was his mother?! Even though Enos was a stranger to her now, her heart ached for him. To lose your father in such a tragic way only to be abandoned by your mother was unconscionable. What a bitch! For a brief moment, Daisy contemplated paying her a visit and giving her a piece of her mind, but then she remembered that it was not 1967 anymore but 1988. All this was water under a bridge long ruined by the hands of time.

**_November 1967: I overheard you and Luke fighting last night about the race, but I couldn't tell what it was about and Uncle Jesse told me not to bring it up so I didn't ask you, but I'm proud of you. That sounds too cheesy to tell you to your face so I'll just tell you here. I'm SO proud of you, I'll even let you talk about your stupid race car without complaining tonight.  
_ **

**_April 20, 1968: I can't believe you WON the RACE! I KNEW YOU WERE BETTER THAN ALL THOSE SHOWOFFS! I can't believe you were nervous about the turns. You did GREAT!  
_ ** _XXXXXXXX!  
_ _No I better not tell you that, you'll just laugh at me. Oh Enos what am I going to do when you go away to the Academy? You're going to forget all about me and someday you'll come home and bring some girl with you and I'll have lost you forever._

Daisy held the page up to one of the candles, trying to divine what had been scribbled out so heavily that it tore through the paper and stained the next page, but she had done a great job of getting rid of whatever she had said.

 **_August 21, 1968: What am I supposed to do now that you're gone? I miss you already and you won't be back until Christmas probably. I can still feel your arms around me from when you hugged me goodbye. How come its okay for Amy to flirt with you but you just laugh at me when I do? I'm 14. Did you know Aunt Lavinia married Uncle Jesse when she was 15?_ ** **_I wish you wouldn't treat me like your little sister. I'm not a kid anymore.  
_ **

She reread the last entry through twice before she closed the journal. Around her, the candles flickered and danced, burning low in the pools of liquid wax. Their light threw her shadow onto the wall - as if the Daisy who had written those words so long ago was here with her, watching to see what she would do with the bread crumbs she had left behind. All she could think of where the years between them, and of all the memories she didn't have.

What had happened between herself and Enos? Had they simply drifted apart as people were wont to do, or had she waited too long to tell him how much she cared about him? According to her family, he had left Hazzard several years ago, and she supposed they had said their good-byes then. More than likely, he was somewhere married with a family of his own by now. He had probably forgotten all about her, and here she was, thinking of chewing out the poor man's mother.

She slipped the journal back inside her box spring and climbed back into bed, letting the votives burn themselves out.


End file.
